It has been over a month now. A child; a man, in Kanye, by the name of Modirinyana Chabadisele, in his 20s has disappeared and he is believed to have been abducted for ritual murder by some local medicine man. The suspected medicine man hasn’t been arrested because the police lack sufficient evidence to arrest him. All they have is allegations with no shred of evidence. However traditional doctors, bonkadilatlha, have claimed that they know (you don’t call them boreaitse for nothing) where the child is held. They claimed that the child was being held in a dark place, waiting to be turned into a zombie. One famous maptshweptshwe said he was only waiting for permission from the relevant authorities to retrieve the child. He never received such permission and the child remains unretrieved.
The men, women, boys and girls of GooKgano have been up in arms, saying they know the man who has abducted Modirinyana and they wanted to act to release their victim seeing that the western laws was failing to retrieve the victim. Anti-riot police were called in. Rubber bullets and tear gas were fired to disperse rioting villagers and marauding crowds of youths. The protesters were arrested: scores of young people were detained while the perpetrator remained free because indeed he remained unknown because the police had no evidence to support the allegations. For some of us who lived through the exciting 90s this brings vivid memories of the case of the 14 year old Segametsi Mogomotsi of Mochudi. Then, yet again, the allegations were as they are now, that she was abducted, murdered for her body parts by some medicine men. Then, as now in Kanye, there were riots, teargas and Scotland Yard was even called in to investigate as neutral outsiders. The best they could do though, was to state that you would need a magic wand to solve the case!
Ritual murders are rare in Kanye and in Botswana in general. There is an understanding that certain traditional doctors do make traditional medicine using human flesh or specific parts of a human body, especially the genitalia. The stories are that such medicine is used to strengthen an individual to excel in business, politics or other influential areas of life. Village legend has it that a local businessman can place an order for tshwene e e senang boboa… ‘a furless baboon’ to use as a foundation for his successful business. But are these practices really part of Setswana culture? It appears that ritual killings do not lie at the heart of Setswana traditional culture though they may have been a secret preserve of certain magosi in the past which made them extremely rare. Any individual who commissioned them outside royalty, was therefore harshly punished for involving himself in witchcraft or acting over his station. For many, they are a thing of boloi, or witchcraft.
Ritual murders are a sharp reminder that for all our education and Christian influence we are still a rustic society which strongly believes in traditional medicine and witchcraft. For many Christianity is just another version of local traditional African belief system. God or Jesus is just seen as a local medicine man….perhaps just a little bit more powerful. That in part explains why many Batswana who have not embraced Christian theology frequent prophets either locally or in other parts of the world. Such visits are really not to seek a theological perspective on a contentious matter. They are similar to the long journeys that our grandparents used to take into the west or east to seek the help of powerful traditional healers. Such trips could take someone days and were usually expensive. One could pay with a cow or two for the services of such a traditional doctor from afar. Things haven’t changed. Many still travel far and spend large sums of money on prophets and men of God.
What sadly happened with the coming of independence is that our laws did not seek to respond to traditional beliefs, the role and contribution of traditional doctors and the various beliefs which still influenced the way people acted and behaved. There is a general belief that legally boloi doesn’t exist since it cannot be proved evidentially in court, though many locals believe that witchcraft actually does exist and many people either practiced it or visit traditional doctors or churches to try to ward off its effects. What are we to do with our beliefs? The constitution of the Republic of Botswana is clear that “Except with his own consent, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of conscience, and for the purposes of this section the said freedom includes freedom of thought and of religion, freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and both in public and in private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.” We must therefore not constrain individual rights to the expression of religious views and their practice. Certainly ritual murders are part of traditional beliefs which are protected by the constitution. However, their practice fractures other constitutional provisions, precisely the right to “life, liberty, security of the person and the protection of the law;” or section 4 (1) provision that “No person shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of an offence under the law in force in Botswana of which he has been convicted.” As long as Batswana believe in witchcraft the belief in the use of human parts for witchcraft will remain. As long as Batswana believe in witchcraft, it doesn’t make sense for many not to use traditional doctors to solve problems.
Batswana must be taught about the sanctity of human life. I am not here talking about villagers only but also urban dwellers since the truth of the matter is that many medicine men have become urbanized. We now have local medicine men working side by side with those from other nations such as Malawi. This part of Botswana life must be regulated, otherwise we will for a long time medicine men who commission murder.
