AFRICANEWS

Tanzania

Witch Killings: Tanzania's silent holocaust

Women

Hundreds of old women are being killed in Tanzania on suspicions that they are witches. It is a terror campaign that has left many of them frightened wondering who is the next one. This is due to the fact that the government seems not ready to address the issue.

On the eve of the International Women's Day, March 8, 1999, two women Mhoja Bundabad and Bulekumana Ngesa were clubbed to death in separate incidences in Sengerema district, Mwanza region. The duo was dismembered before the killers melted into darkness leaving behind fear, and unanswered questions: why this orgy of senseless killings? The two had been accused of practising witchcraft.

Figures released by the Mwanza Region Police commander, Elia Kihengu recently show that 382 old women were murdered between 1997 and March 1998 in the Mwanza region alone. Another survey done by Tanzania Media Women's Association (TAMWA) shows that between 1994 and June 1997, some 399 people were killed in Shinyanga Region on witchcraft beliefs, 99 per cent of who were women. These figures hardly exhaustive; they represent only the cases brought to the attention of the law enforcing organs.

Hundred others are murdered each year in remote villages in Mwanza and Shinyanga region and go virtually unaccounted for. Actually, the grisly killings effected by means of crude tools amount to a silent holocaust perpetrated against elderly Sukuma women.

With the escalation of the killings the UN Secretary General's Advisor on Women Affairs in the country, Getrude Mongella, has called on the government to educate people on the plight of old women in Sukuma areas to avert further killings. But whether the government will be able to do anything is doubtful. Witchcraft beliefs are so entrenched among the Sukuma people that it is not easy to get people to cooperate with the police to reveal the identities of killers for fear of reprisals, which can be fatal. Last December five people of the same family were murdered in Nyabuhinza village, Shinyanga region, but no one would volunteer any information on the killers believed to be known by some at least in the village.

Despite the fact that it is hard to penetrate killers' gangs, the government seems to be doing woefully little to check the worsening problem. Nearly, 800 innocent women perished over the last two years according to official statistics, a number more than half of the total official casualties in the entire Uganda campaign to oust dictator Idd Amin in 1979 and 1980. But still little appears to have been done to arrest the latest murderous trend.

For outsiders what is happening among the Sukuma people, the biggest tribe in the country, is baffling. Why shouldn't Sukuma people act against killers? How can such killings go on in a country claiming to be free? Hard questions. But it is important to know that the mysterious killings have their roots in the age-old beliefs of the Sukuma people, beliefs that die-hard. Fr Charles Bundu, of Malampaka parish, Shinyanga, where some grisly killings have occurred in recent years, says the problem lies in the Sukuma understanding of causality of death.

"In case of death of a relative or friend," he says, "People don't ask 'what' caused death, but 'who' and this 'who' is usually a person, a witch to be done away with." Usually grieved relatives, after seeking a diviner's advice on the identity of their relative's sorcerer; they often seek the services of contract killers. The killers usually operate in gangs bound by an oath of secrecy. Researchers Middleton and H. Winters say, "The Basukuma people don't accept premature or natural deaths under the approximate age of fifty years old. Accident deaths are looked upon with superstition, more so that natural death." Usually people attribute such deaths to witches. "If a diviner repeatedly finds the same person as the cause of other deaths, he is called a nogi(a person who performs witchcraft or sorcery)." Such a person, usually an old woman, will be killed.

Unfortunately, there is no foolproof manner of identifying a witch. In popular mind a witch is pictured as having 'red eyes or slits on their lower eyelids or on eyelashes from frequent application of magic medicine,' Middleton and Winters say. But since Basukuma feels that witches and sorcerers conceal their identity, there is o way for someone to prove his innocence if accused of practicing witchcraft.

However, some say the question of identifying witches is blatantly arbitrary. The Director of information in the Archdiocese of Mwanza, Christopher Kubeja say red eyes are not necessarily caused by medicine. "Many women use a readily available types of wood called minyara for fuel. This type of wood produce harsh smoke that irritates eyes making them reddish," he says.

Besides witchcraft, there are other motives for ongoing killings, however. Sheer score settling is one reason. And plain quest to inherit some rich widow's property is another. Increasingly money is becoming a factor in these killings. "Contract killers murder for as little as Tsh 10,000 (USD 15), " Fr Bundu says. Whether it is witchcraft or settling of scores, the situation has become one frightening one that the government is being asked to take it seriously and act as such. After years of hardship that women endure, one would expect them to be alone to die in peace in their old age. This is one privilege many an old Sukuma women in Mwanza and Shinyanga regions are being denied and many of them keep on asking themselves: who next? They are literally haunted to grave by fear.

The government left no stone unturned in the aftermath of the US Embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam, in 1998 where 12 people lost their lives, some are saying. Hence, they add that it is ironical that the same regime now seems bereft of ideas how to deal with this menace against old Sukuma women. But while the government is still mulling over what to do, the Ngwesa's and Bundabad's keep dying with no one to protect them. The question is for how long? Are those hacked by machetes and clubbed by rungus less human than bomb victims?

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