Mabhinya social media claims, real murder cases
GROWING up in the Chirinda area in the late 1970’s, we always heard chilling stories about “mabhinya’’ who would kill young boys and girls in order to take their organs for onward transmission to traditional healers who would make concoctions which would enable a businessperson to be very rich.
I remember my late brother, Themba, would start a provocative song along with other older boys like Josiah Chimbanje and Madubeko urging the ritual murderers to come out in the open to fight them. As young boys, we would be amused by such daring songs but we never saw a dead body which was a result of ritual murder.
However, many stories have been told of bodies in the Chirinda Forest and they were yarns of local business people being behind the deaths.
Over the years, the spectre of ritual murders has continued to haunt the nation as unconfirmed reports say there is organ trafficking which is so rife that some people claim the police are part of the racket as these unscrupulous criminals evade capture and go to a named African country where the organs are used to trap a shark which is caught and the adept businesspeople go on to extract gold and pearls which would make them instant millionaires. These tall tales give rise to the current social media craze which says Boko Haram and Tutsi militias are here to wreak havoc in rural areas where the majority of Zimbabweans live.
Yet others claim the “mabhinya’’ hoax is a political strategy to scare the rural people to vote for the ruling party. It would have been plausible if the President had not opened up every part of the country for inspection by the international observers. Some of the social media stories are laughable at best but as we speak, in many rural areas, parents escort their children to school.
Going back to those years where our parents told us to move in groups for security guarantees, we heard intriguing and weird stories about those business people who fell into the temptation of getting involved in ritual murders to boost their business. There was this story of a woman who went to the grinding mill where she heard the unmistakable voice of her son wailing, ‘’nemwiwo here mai? How can you come here and grind your maize here?’’
It happened every time she went there and she told her husband about the mournful wail which was unmistakably her son’s.
Her husband corroborated the story and the whole village stopped going to that grinding mill. Needless to say, the business man went bankrupt. He had to pay compensation for the ritual murder. His business never reached the dizzy heights he expected. He died a broken man.
Human beings revel in myth and legends; more importantly, the belief in instant riches is borrowed from the prosperity gospel; the only problem is these people are never patient; they want instant riches which would make them the wannabes of this world who brush their shoulders with royalty. You hear someone say it is easy to be very rich if you follow the ABC of wealth creation. What can the society do to demystify the issue of ritual murder which has fascinated the nation these past four or five weeks?
Truth frees people, the Bible says. Authorities have to present truthful information to the public. If a corpse has missing body parts, why don’t the police say it out?
This economics in terms of the truth is detrimental to demystifying the ritual murderers. Granted, society is naturally averse to people who are instant successes when they never saw the person sweating it out to reach the top.
Recently, at Manesa village in Chief Mutema’s area, a young man lost his life under unclear circumstances and the police say they are investigating to find the killers although they agree that there were tyre marks ten metres from where the corpse was found. I am no forensic scientist but it is my submission that those tyre marks could have led the police to the killer.
Up to now the police are at sea and the public lives in fear in a country where security is guaranteed in the constitution. Has the police failed in its constitutional obligation? People are living in perpetual fear as the “mabhinya’’ stories inundate the social media.
Court officials and police departments rely on evidence. Why not rope in the traditional leaders into the “mabhinya’’ scourge and bring closure to the malfeasant members of the society?
Close cooperation between these erstwhile colleagues can rein in this scourge. If a stock thief can be sentenced to 50 years in jail, what is wrong with meting similar sentences when someone is found with human organs in his fridge?
Isn’t it high time that the media and the police work hand in glove to sensitise the community on the disadvantages of being used by business people to feather their nests? Neighbourhood Watch Committees are no longer as vibrant as before. Why not resuscitate them? In those bygone days, a stranger had to be introduced to the village leaders. Even in compounds, the foreman had to know every person who visited a homestead. Perhaps, vigilance has to return to our vocabulary.
Who is that person who has been seen at the township and no one knows him? I am not agitating taking the law into our hands but close liaison between the community and the security agencies may be a window to arresting the menace which instils fear in every one.