Medicine murder
Encyclopedia
A Medicine murder is the killing of a human being in order to excise body parts to use as medicine. It is not human sacrifice
in a religious sense because the motivation is not the death of human, but the creation of an item or items from their corpus for use in traditional healing. Its practice in the format described below occurs primarily in sub-Saharan Africa
.
Medicine murder in southern Africa
has been documented in some small detail in South Africa
, Lesotho
and Swaziland
, although it is a difficult subject to investigate because of its controversial standing in customary practices and laws. Very few research and discussion documents have been devoted to this subject. Three concerning Lesotho were published in 1951, 2000 and 2005 regarding the same events in the 1940s and 1950s; one concerning Swaziland was published in 1993 covering the 1970s and 1980s; and a commission of enquiry held in South Africa in 1995 covering medicine murder and witchcraft in the 1980s and 1990s.
, although there is evidence to suggest that the degree of ritual
involved in the making of medicine is only a small element of the practice overall. The objective of medicine murder is to create traditional medicine based partly on human flesh. Social anthropological ethnographies have documented anecdotes of medicine murder in southern Africa since the 1800s, and research has shown that incidences of medicine murder increase in times of political and economic stress. The practice is commonly associated with witchcraft
, although ethnographic evidence suggests that this has not always been the case, and that it may have been accorded local-level political sanction. Medicine murder is difficult to describe concisely, as it has changed over time, involving an ever-greater variety of perpetrator, victim, method and motive. Most detailed information about the minutiae of medicine murder is derived from state witnesses in trials, court records and third-party anecdote. The phenomenon is widely acknowledged to occur in southern Africa, although no country has issued an accurate and up to date record of the frequency with which it takes place. This is not only because of the secrecy of the practice, given its controversial status, but also because of difficulties in classifying subcategories of murder. Medicine murder has been a topic of urban legends in South Africa, but this does not diminish its status as a practice that has resulted in legal trials and convictions of perpetrators.
when Phillippa Mdluli was hanged in 1983 for commissioning a medicine murder. Perpetrators vary widely in age and social status.
An individual or group of individuals commissions a traditional healer or inyanga
/ nanga (a herbalist skilled in traditional medicine) to assist them by concocting medicine (or muti). The medicine supposedly strengthens the 'personality' or personal force of the person who commissions the medicine. This increased personal force enables the person to excel in business, politics, or other sphere of influence. A human victim is identified for murder in order to create the medicine.
Victims vary widely in age and social standing. They are often young children or elderly people, and are both male and female. In some instances, the victim is identified and 'purchased' via a transaction involving an often nominal amount of money. The victim is then abducted, often at night, and taken to an isolated place, often in the open countryside if the murder is being committed in a rural area. It is usually intended that the victim be mutilated while conscious, so that the medicine can be made more potent through the noises of the victim in agony. Mutilation does not take place in order to kill the victim, but it is expected that the victim will die of the wounds.
Body parts excised mostly include soft tissue - eyelids, lips, scrota
, labia - although there have been instances where entire limbs have been severed. These body parts are removed to be mixed with medicinal plants to create a medicine through a cooking process. The resulting medicine is sometimes consumed, but is often made into a paste that is carried on the person of the perpetrator or rubbed onto scarifications.
was experiencing internal political strife between several political groupings, it became clear that some mutilations for medicine were opportunistic and incidental to the assassination of political opponents. There have also been occurrences of mutilation of corpses in medical facilities. In not all cases does the employment of a traditional healer seem to have been thought necessary to the process.
, Botswana
and body parts removed. The killing was widely believed to have been for muti, and the police even recovered some excised organs. However, these were destroyed before being tested to establish them as human, leading to accusations of police complicity with the murder. The killing led to riots as students in Mochudi protested about police inaction, and eventually Scotland Yard
from Britain were asked to investigate, as neutral outsiders. Their report was given to the Botswana government, which did not release it to the public. These events inspired some of the events in the book The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith
.
The five-year-old’s identity has remained a mystery after he was smuggled into Britain and murdered in a voodoo-style ritual killing.
He was drugged with a ‘black-magic’ potion and sacrificed before being thrown into the Thames, where his torso washed up next to the Globe Theatre in September 2001.
Detectives used pioneering scientific techniques to trace radioactive isotopes in his bones to his native Nigeria.
They even enlisted Nelson Mandela to appeal for information about the murder.
But they always struggled to formally identify the boy, whom they called Adam, despite travelling to the West African state to try to trace his family.
Now Nigerian Joyce Osiagede, the only person to be arrested in Britain as part of the inquiry, has claimed that the vitim's real name is Ikpomwosa.
In an interview with ITV’s London Tonight, Mrs Osiagede said she looked after the boy in Germany for a year before travelling to Britain without him in 2001.
She claimed she handed the boy over to a man known as Bawa who later told her that he was dead and threatened to kill her unless she kept silent.
Police have passed numerous files on the case to the Crown Prosecution Service but it has never gone to court.
A second suspect, a Nigerian man, was arrested in Dublin in 2003 but was never charged.
Mrs Osiagede was first questioned by police after they found clothing similar to that worn by ‘Adam’ in her Glasgow tower-block flat in 2002.
The only clothing on his body was a pair of orange shorts, exclusively sold in Woolworths in Germany and Austria.
Dressed in a traditional gold and green dress, Mrs Osiagede denied any involvement with the death of the young boy. Asked who killed him, she said a ‘group of people’.
She added: ‘They used him for a ritual in the water.’
Claiming the boy was six years old, she said: ‘He was a lively boy. A very nice boy, he was also intelligent.’
Detailed analysis of a substance in the boy’s stomach was identified as a ‘black magic’ potion.
It included tiny clay pellets containing small particles of pure gold, an indication that Adam was the victim of a Muti ritual killing in which it is believed that the body parts of children are sacred. Bodies are often disposed of in flowing water.
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
in a religious sense because the motivation is not the death of human, but the creation of an item or items from their corpus for use in traditional healing. Its practice in the format described below occurs primarily in sub-Saharan Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
.
Medicine murder in southern Africa
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...
has been documented in some small detail in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, Lesotho
Lesotho
Lesotho , officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a landlocked country and enclave, surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. It is just over in size with a population of approximately 2,067,000. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. Lesotho is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The name...
and Swaziland
Swaziland
Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...
, although it is a difficult subject to investigate because of its controversial standing in customary practices and laws. Very few research and discussion documents have been devoted to this subject. Three concerning Lesotho were published in 1951, 2000 and 2005 regarding the same events in the 1940s and 1950s; one concerning Swaziland was published in 1993 covering the 1970s and 1980s; and a commission of enquiry held in South Africa in 1995 covering medicine murder and witchcraft in the 1980s and 1990s.
Purpose and frequency
Medicine murder is often termed ritual murder or muthi / muti murderMuti
Muti is a term for traditional medicine in Southern Africa as far north as Lake Tanganyika. The word muti is derived from the Zulu word for tree, of which the root is -thi...
, although there is evidence to suggest that the degree of ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
involved in the making of medicine is only a small element of the practice overall. The objective of medicine murder is to create traditional medicine based partly on human flesh. Social anthropological ethnographies have documented anecdotes of medicine murder in southern Africa since the 1800s, and research has shown that incidences of medicine murder increase in times of political and economic stress. The practice is commonly associated with witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, although ethnographic evidence suggests that this has not always been the case, and that it may have been accorded local-level political sanction. Medicine murder is difficult to describe concisely, as it has changed over time, involving an ever-greater variety of perpetrator, victim, method and motive. Most detailed information about the minutiae of medicine murder is derived from state witnesses in trials, court records and third-party anecdote. The phenomenon is widely acknowledged to occur in southern Africa, although no country has issued an accurate and up to date record of the frequency with which it takes place. This is not only because of the secrecy of the practice, given its controversial status, but also because of difficulties in classifying subcategories of murder. Medicine murder has been a topic of urban legends in South Africa, but this does not diminish its status as a practice that has resulted in legal trials and convictions of perpetrators.
Methodology
The perpetrators are usually men, although women have been convicted as well, most notably in SwazilandSwaziland
Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...
when Phillippa Mdluli was hanged in 1983 for commissioning a medicine murder. Perpetrators vary widely in age and social status.
An individual or group of individuals commissions a traditional healer or inyanga
Inyanga
Inyanga is a Zulu word for a traditional herbal healer.An inyanga is a traditional South African herbalist, herb doctor, or medicine man or woman. The Southern African word inyanga is related to the Central African nganga, meaning a priest and medicine man...
/ nanga (a herbalist skilled in traditional medicine) to assist them by concocting medicine (or muti). The medicine supposedly strengthens the 'personality' or personal force of the person who commissions the medicine. This increased personal force enables the person to excel in business, politics, or other sphere of influence. A human victim is identified for murder in order to create the medicine.
Victims vary widely in age and social standing. They are often young children or elderly people, and are both male and female. In some instances, the victim is identified and 'purchased' via a transaction involving an often nominal amount of money. The victim is then abducted, often at night, and taken to an isolated place, often in the open countryside if the murder is being committed in a rural area. It is usually intended that the victim be mutilated while conscious, so that the medicine can be made more potent through the noises of the victim in agony. Mutilation does not take place in order to kill the victim, but it is expected that the victim will die of the wounds.
Body parts excised mostly include soft tissue - eyelids, lips, scrota
Scrotum
In some male mammals the scrotum is a dual-chambered protuberance of skin and muscle containing the testicles and divided by a septum. It is an extension of the perineum, and is located between the penis and anus. In humans and some other mammals, the base of the scrotum becomes covered with curly...
, labia - although there have been instances where entire limbs have been severed. These body parts are removed to be mixed with medicinal plants to create a medicine through a cooking process. The resulting medicine is sometimes consumed, but is often made into a paste that is carried on the person of the perpetrator or rubbed onto scarifications.
Variances
Since the 1970s in particular, the manner in which medicine murder is practiced has become variable to the methods described above, although the continued practice of medicine murder demonstrates that belief in human flesh as a powerful medicinal component remains strong in some communities. It would appear that medicine murder in the 18th and 19th centuries may have been considered the legitimate domain of traditional chiefs and leaders, in order to improve agriculture and protect against war. Following industrialisation and growth of commerce, the range of purposes for which medicine was used to increase influence expanded significantly. In the early 1990s when South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
was experiencing internal political strife between several political groupings, it became clear that some mutilations for medicine were opportunistic and incidental to the assassination of political opponents. There have also been occurrences of mutilation of corpses in medical facilities. In not all cases does the employment of a traditional healer seem to have been thought necessary to the process.
Notable cases
In 1994, a 14-year-old named Segametsi Mogomotsi was murdered in MochudiMochudi
Mochudi is one of the larger villages in Botswana with a population of around 40,000. It is situated in the Bakgatla tribal region, in Kgatleng District, about northeast of Gaborone...
, Botswana
Botswana
Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" . Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966...
and body parts removed. The killing was widely believed to have been for muti, and the police even recovered some excised organs. However, these were destroyed before being tested to establish them as human, leading to accusations of police complicity with the murder. The killing led to riots as students in Mochudi protested about police inaction, and eventually Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
from Britain were asked to investigate, as neutral outsiders. Their report was given to the Botswana government, which did not release it to the public. These events inspired some of the events in the book The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a series of twelve novels by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith. The agency is located in Gaborone, capital of Botswana. Its founder is a Motswana woman, Mma Precious Ramotswe, who features as the stories' protagonist and main detective...
by Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees...
.
2001 Thames torso case
A little boy whose headless and limbless body was found floating in the Thames in 2001 was identified by an arrestee in March 2011.The five-year-old’s identity has remained a mystery after he was smuggled into Britain and murdered in a voodoo-style ritual killing.
He was drugged with a ‘black-magic’ potion and sacrificed before being thrown into the Thames, where his torso washed up next to the Globe Theatre in September 2001.
Detectives used pioneering scientific techniques to trace radioactive isotopes in his bones to his native Nigeria.
They even enlisted Nelson Mandela to appeal for information about the murder.
But they always struggled to formally identify the boy, whom they called Adam, despite travelling to the West African state to try to trace his family.
Now Nigerian Joyce Osiagede, the only person to be arrested in Britain as part of the inquiry, has claimed that the vitim's real name is Ikpomwosa.
In an interview with ITV’s London Tonight, Mrs Osiagede said she looked after the boy in Germany for a year before travelling to Britain without him in 2001.
She claimed she handed the boy over to a man known as Bawa who later told her that he was dead and threatened to kill her unless she kept silent.
Police have passed numerous files on the case to the Crown Prosecution Service but it has never gone to court.
A second suspect, a Nigerian man, was arrested in Dublin in 2003 but was never charged.
Mrs Osiagede was first questioned by police after they found clothing similar to that worn by ‘Adam’ in her Glasgow tower-block flat in 2002.
The only clothing on his body was a pair of orange shorts, exclusively sold in Woolworths in Germany and Austria.
Dressed in a traditional gold and green dress, Mrs Osiagede denied any involvement with the death of the young boy. Asked who killed him, she said a ‘group of people’.
She added: ‘They used him for a ritual in the water.’
Claiming the boy was six years old, she said: ‘He was a lively boy. A very nice boy, he was also intelligent.’
Detailed analysis of a substance in the boy’s stomach was identified as a ‘black magic’ potion.
It included tiny clay pellets containing small particles of pure gold, an indication that Adam was the victim of a Muti ritual killing in which it is believed that the body parts of children are sacred. Bodies are often disposed of in flowing water.