Abstract
Twenty years after becoming a democracy, South Africa still has two parallel systems of justice. Even so, accusations of witchcraft have led some to take matters into their own hands, reports
Two months earlier, a 52-year-old woman named Catherine Nkovani-Chauke was murdered by a mob that declared her a witch. Phiyega’s visit was billed as part of an outreach programme. Her officers had visited police stations in Thomo and its surrounding area to gather information about recent witchcraft-linked cases, both those in which a suspect “witch” was attacked and those in which elements of witchcraft were part of a crime’s modus operandi.
She addressed hundreds of people at the Thomo Sports Grounds, urging them not to take the law into their own hands. Instead, she said, residents should work with the police to keep their villages safe. The commissioner’s visit, 20 years after South Africa became a democracy, did not highlight a new problem in Limpopo.
In the politically turbulent decade between 1985 and 1996, as South Africa made the transition from apartheid to democracy, killings and “witch purging” were very common in the province. The violence reached such a scale that a Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft, Violence and Ritual Murder in the Northern Province was set up. It was chaired by Professor Victor Ralushai, an eminent scholar of African knowledge systems and became known as the Ralushai Commission.
Katherine Howe, editor of the recently published Penguin Book of Witches, writes of the Puritans who settled North America in the 1600s: “Witches served as both literal and figurative scapegoats for frontier communities under profound economic, religious, and political pressure.”
Centuries and continents away, consider this extract from the Ralushai Commission’s report in 1995: “All kinds of misfortune, including matters as varied as financial problems, illness, drought or lightening [sic] strikes, are blamed on witchcraft.”
The commission recommended police-led interventions to teach communities about the dangers of false allegations and witch hunts. For the past two decades, these killings have been rare, or rarely reported. But last August Phiyega stood before the residents of Thomo, listing recent examples of suspected witches who had been driven out of their homes, attacked by mobs and stoned to death.
“South Africa is a country emerging from a past characterised by horrific scenes of violence. As we approach our maturity as a democracy, we continue to witness extreme violence perpetrated against women and children. We are seeing acts of gross violation of basic human rights. Vigilantism, ritual killings and mob justice have no place under our constitutional democratic dispensation. These so-called muti (traditional medicine) killings are serious crimes against humanity and need a collaborative approach to combat,” Phiyega said.
Police Commissioner General Riah Phiyega (left) has been investigating “witch killings” in South Africa
Credit: Gallo Images/ City Press /Leon Sadiki/Alamy Live News
“A study prepared for the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions in 2011 documented that witchcraft had been widely practised in African societies since before the colonial time. Belief in how witchcraft is practised varies from state to state, but the practice of witchcraft is often to give a justification for why bad things happen to certain people … Accusations of witchcraft can lead to violations of a wide range of human rights, including the right to life.”
Politically South Africa is far more stable than it was 20 years ago. Economically, it remains one of the world’s most unequal societies. In under-developed rural areas where residents remain largely unemployed and under-educated, where job opportunities are rare and resources are scarce, the conditions are ripe for scapegoating.
Ranson Mashile is one such scapegoat. As a headman, he is the first port of call for people who want help and guidance in Ga-Boelang village in the north of Mpumalanga province. As chief headman, Mashile and others in the area’s Sehlare Tribal Authority are responsible for resolving disputes between neighbours. They must adjudicate in cases of theft or disagreements about property boundaries. Headmen are also called to intervene when a resident is accused of witchcraft. There are no reliable statistics for how many people are falsely accused of witchcraft in South Africa each year. Old, single women in rural villages are particularly vulnerable to allegations.
Mashile’s standing in his community did not help him when, in August 2012, his home was razed by a group of people who accused him of bewitching and killing one of his closest friends. He knew what was coming: by the time the torch-wielding mob arrived, the 67-year-old was hiding at the local Acornhoek police station. He was never formally tried for his alleged crimes, neither before a traditional court convened by his fellow headmen in the tribal authority, nor in one of South Africa’s regional or magistrates’ courts. Instead, he arrived at a community meeting one Sunday morning in Ga-Boelang and found a local politician, Delta Mokoena, accusing him of murder.
Mashile told South Africa’s City Press in late 2013 in an interview in the police station that is now his home: “I run an initiation [circumcision] school and my late friend, Pebane, used to have his own. He was sick and eventually died, but [Mokoena] said I bewitched him. When I arrived [at the meeting], Mokoena said I had killed Pebane … I left my house the same day in fear. A week later, it was burnt.”
Mokoena leads the Bushbuckridge Residents’ Association or BRA. It splintered from the powerful governing party, the African National Congress, in 2010 and has repeatedly been implicated in arson attacks and assaults. Mokoena has two criminal convictions: one, for accusing Mashile of practising witchcraft and for arson, and the other for intimidation. He unlawfully evicted a man from his Ga-Boelang home in 2010 after accusing the man’s son of theft and threatening to burn the family’s house down while they were inside.
In the three years from 2010 to 2013, at least 20 families were thrown out of their homes in Ga-Boelang and surrounding villages in this rural corner of Mpumalanga. Houses were looted and torched. City Press reported alongside its interview with Mashile that “schools [were] shut down for weeks after teachers were accused of dabbling in the dark arts and the children of ‘witches’ and ‘satanists’ were forced to drop out of school”.
All kinds of misfortune, including financial problems, drought or lightning strikes, are blamed on witchcraft
These allegations were not placed before the area’s traditional courts where the accused might have been given a chance to defend themselves. The courts, most common in South Africa’s sprawling rural areas in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, largely use mediation to ensure that custom and tradition are honoured. Here, there are no lawyers. You may call witnesses to defend your version of events. Ultimately, traditional courts are a space in which respected, often conservative, and almost always male leaders assert their power in a bid to keep their constituencies harmonious.
A review of traditional leadership and courts conducted by the country’s government in 2008 describes their ideal role in rural communities: “They were seen as having a unique role in jurisprudence – one that ‘tries people’ not to punish them but to repair relationships between them. The manner in which negotiations are facilitated in courts was cited as an example of how traditional courts are not about analysis of the sum total of fact to reach a verdict but about ensuring that the accused and the aggrieved come to terms with the ills of their relationship.”
The courts’ detractors say this ideal could not be further from the truth. The Traditional Courts Bill, first tabled for discussion in South Africa’s Parliament in 2008, sparked a vicious six-year battle between traditional leaders and those opposed to handing them more power. Women’s rights activists were particularly engaged. In September 2012, a woman named Stombi Hlombe told parliament: “I was born with 10 fingers. Now I don’t have 10 fingers because the traditional leader stood by and did nothing to protect me because I am a woman.”
I don’t have 10 fingers because the traditional leader stood by and did nothing to protect me because I am a woman
Hlombe’s “crime”? She was a woman in authority – voted on to her area’s Amahlubi Traditional Council alongside male leaders. A legislative change in 2007 meant that women could finally be represented in traditional leadership structures, including hearing evidence and mediating disputes in traditional courts. Hlombe lodged a complaint against another councillor, a man who swore at her when she spoke at meetings.
“Nobody, not even the chief Mzuwenkosi Hadebe, protected me. So I made a case against him with that very traditional council, and he lost the case and was ordered to pay a fine of R5,000”, she testified in parliament. “He told the chief and the traditional council that he would not pay anything. They all kept quiet.”
Weeks later, another council member attacked her in a taxi and bit her finger so badly that it had to be amputated.
This is the dark side of traditional justice. Those who opposed the bill said it would do nothing to protect South Africa’s rural citizens, particularly women.
“It’s oppressive to women and discriminatory … We don’t think traditional courts should be allowed to impose forced labour [one of the “sentences” that can be passed by the courts]. Why are we taking our people to the dark ages?” South Africa’s then-minister of women, children and people with disabilities, Lulu Xingwana, asked parliament in September 2012.
“The department of justice admitted that the bill was drafted on the basis of talking to the houses of traditional leaders who are mostly male,” she said, adding that women are usually those on the receiving end of decisions of traditional courts. “On … witchcraft killings the bill is also quiet.”
The controversial bill was ultimately scrapped at the beginning of 2014, months before Phiyega went to Thomo to plead for the killings to stop. There have been no high-profile cases in Limpopo since her visit, and in neighbouring Mpumalanga, Ranson Mashile has finally been able to leave the Acornhoek police station. But with South Africa’s local government elections set for 2016 and inequality deepening each year, it seems unlikely the search for scapegoats is over.
