Traditional courts give culture a bad name
MANY people in the Diaspora have voiced their disquiet over the manner some headmen conduct themselves in the traditional courts.
Zimbabwean tradition has been misrepresented by Headman Chigodora and his assessors. The assessors are so rude and disrespectful to the people who come before them for justice.
They are so over excited with publicity and have disrespected our beautiful cultural traditional customary justice. In this court every old person is a witch every rich person is a witch. Has Zimbabwe economy become so poor that most successful businessman are accused of witchcraft
“I was shocked watching a YouTube clip of headman Chigodora accusing a Jehovah’s Witness member that his source of wealth is from witchcraft,” commented Lean Chachoka from Corby UK.
The Government encouraged citizens to start entrepreneurship. Others are running successful farms, trading and so many things.
Self-employment income is flourishing for others unlike regular white collar job or 9 to 5 would not be rewarding as much in monetary in comparison to salaried jobs.
This is frustrating to the norm of the mass success for years has always been owned by white man owning their business in our country and us blacks we see ourselves at bottom. We have no self-belief of a fellow making money.
This has engrained so much that we title “murungu wangu” (my white boss) to our black boss.
We frown on jobs such as selling on outdoor market though these vendors have good returns.
The daughter of the late Roger Boka said selling cabbages was what revived her late father’s tobacco sales. Her story was accepted based on her background. Unfortunately for many it is always questionable.
Wealth can only be measured by the route that white man standards were set. You have to complete education followed by a degree or diploma get employed that’s the only way to account clean money.
The late Genius “Ginimbi” Kadungure did not speak fluent English and the source of his wealth up to now has divided the country.
The world over people believe in witch craft. In Europe, by far the most common kind of harm attributed to witchcraft was illness or death suffered by adults, their children, or their animals.
Certain ailments, like impotence in men, infertility in women, and lack of milk in cows, were particularly associated with witchcraft.
Witchcraft, traditionally, is the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, especially in the West, and in Africa as whole as the work of crones who meet secretly at night, indulge in cannibalism and orgiastic rites with the devil, or Satan, and perform black magic.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality. ‘Cases of people being murdered on allegations of witchcraft are on the rise and the media is one of the institutions that should be blamed for this.’ But this is sad when it happens in our backyard.
Headman Chigodora has subjected people in his area to serious witch hunt. His style of leadership is surely unreasonable. He is the kind of man who puts the Zimbabwean culture into disrepute.
In reality Headman Chigodora is to blame for spreading the negative perception of older persons as having a hand in the deaths of people related to the accused. Chigodora portrays the elderly as witches or wizards. His judgment is to force people to go to witch doctors to be cleansed.
The majority of his judgments on YouTube are very negative about the elderly people and they portray them in a very bad way. It is very soon that Headman Chigodora will have caused people to be killed or burned alive on allegations of practising witchcraft. He strives on gossip and he publicly admits it.
He presides over a case he would have been told by the complainant and in most cases he comes to his court already with a decision. Chigodora says; “I know your case already and I was told everything already”.
In Chigodora’s court the majority of the victims of witchcraft allegations are the elderly, especially the vulnerable widows without a male figure to protect their interests.
In Zimbabwe witchcraft beliefs are so strong and are part of cultural and traditional systems. Zimbabwe needs strong customary and traditional leaders and witchcraft advocates like Chigodora must not be allowed to preside over such sensitive issues.
The killings of people for merely being suspected of practising witchcraft is one of the most serious human rights violations that we are witnessing today. So the unfair judgements of Chigodora must be scorned upon.
The repealed Suppression of witchcraft outlawed tribal mediation by chiefs and traditional healers in witchcraft accusation trials. This Western legislative intervention denies African justice to Africans who believe in the reality of African witchcraft. As a result, there have been many recorded instances where ordinary African people, thinking themselves bewitched, have turned to self-help to protect themselves against bewitchment; mob justice and witchcraft violence have escalated like never before.
Now Zimbabwe has Headman Chigodora who actually justifies that the suppression of witchcraft act should be returned.
Just to have a glimpse into Headman Chigodora’s court. He is assisted by four assessors who are bullies. They have no respect for those who attend their courts. They shout at the poor defendants and threaten them with physical harm.
The worst of all they threaten people by saying they are sent by the Government. It is a pity that no one has ever challenged Headman Chigodora.
He demands money from both the accused and complainant.
Headman Chigodora has no respect for the constitution of Zimbabwe.
He forcefully forced a Jehova’s Witness member known as Chris to go to a traditional healer. The man protested his religion forbade him but Chigodora urged the relatives of Chris to tie him up and force him to go before a healer.
The behaviour of Headman Chigodora begs a question whether chiefs still have a role to play in the witchcraft cases. Can the chiefs “act as a unique linkage between the contemporary state and civil society in view of the way Headman Chigodora acts?
To what extent can the chiefs even form an alternative source of power in the face of the threatened collapse of the culture? Witchcraft beliefs cut across socio-demographic groups but are less widespread among the more educated and economically secure.
Country-level variation in the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs is systematically linked to a number of cultural, institutional, psychological, and socioeconomic characteristics. Consistent with their hypothesized function of maintaining order and cohesion in the absence of effective governance mechanisms, witchcraft beliefs are more widespread in countries with weak institutions and correlate positively with conformist culture and in-group bias.
Among the documented potential costs of witchcraft beliefs are disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic world view, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity.
Communities that believe in witchcraft are always behind economically.
Beliefs in witchcraft, defined as an ability of certain people to intentionally cause harm via supernatural means, have been documented all over the world, both recently and in the distant past.
We do agree that witchcraft beliefs generate two types of fear, ubiquitous in communities where such beliefs are present: the fear of witchcraft attacks and the fear of witchcraft accusations and ensuing punishment. These fears affect people’s attitudes and behaviours in fundamental ways as they seek to avoid provoking a witch and being labelled as one, which explains both the negative consequences and the social functions of witchcraft beliefs.
On the flip side is the ability of witchcraft-related fears to generate cultural conformity and maintain group-level cohesion under the threat of punishment (in the form of bewitchment or accusation) for transgressing existing norms and challenging the status quo.
In Zimbabwe, victims of witchcraft accusations, who are most commonly children and older women, face banishment from their communities, loss of property, and physical violence.’ Even if steps are taken to “cure” the individual, the label of witch may follow an individual throughout her entire life.
Those accused of witchcraft may flee their home areas to escape anticipated harm or may be forced from their villages by the community. This is what Headman Chigodora specialises in.
The worst of all, Chigodora will judge you and demand that you go to see a witch doctor. Surprisingly Chigodora will force you to go to his favourite witch doctor, Sekuru Tasvu.
Obviously Chigodora tells Tasvu what to do and who is coming. Tasvu will then behave as if he has seen them supernaturally when in actual fact he has been told what to say. As for Karanganda TV they just want content.
People in these remote areas are being short-changed. Chigodora needs to be controlled. He is an unguided missile. He forces men not to shave their hair. Surely we need total protection.
However, there is no official State religion in Zimbabwe. Article 60 of the Constitution guarantees “freedom of thought, opinion, religion or belief; and freedom to practise and propagate and give expression to their thought, opinion, religion or belief, whether in public or in private…”
But in the kangaroo court of Headman Chigodora only witchcraft is the belief which must be followed. The Constitution protects the right of individuals to choose and change their religion as well as to privately or publicly manifest and propagate their religion through worship, teaching, practice, and observance.
The treatment of the Jehovah’s Witness man by Headman Chigodora was unconstitutional. Every problem is not solved by witch doctors.
Headman Chigodora must employ court officials who respect people. He never gives a person a chance to be heard. The process in that court is barbaric and cruel.
vazet2000@yahoo.co.uk