WITCHCRAFT OR LITTERING?

As details of the bad blood between Chief Justice Terrence Rannowane and Justice Gaolapelwe Ketlogetswe tumble out, one stands out for its shock value. In a letter in which he rebuts one earlier written by Justice Gaolapelwe Ketlogetswe, Rannowane refers to an incident in which a dead lizard was deposited either at the house or office ( the letter isn’t clear where) of former Chief Justice Maruping Dibotelo. This was done “with a threat that it was some witchcraft from some foreign land and threatening him with death if he did not resign with immediate effect.” The letter backgrounds this incident against a feud between Dibotelo and a group of associate judges. While one wants to commend the culprits for taking interest in indigenous culture and seeking to preserve it, there is also disappointment that those behind the alleged deed have a criminally poor understanding of how supernatural forces can be manipulated in one’s favour. Firstly, they chose the wrong animal – a lizard is used to stifle growth of certain indigenous crops on an enemy’s crop field. Even then, such stifling can only happen between mid- January and early March and only the tongue and nails of the front feet are used. In order to cause death, the culprits in question would have needed a herbal plant that grows on kopjes called malambapatjikwa, the spinal cord of a six- month old black mamba, two pinches of sand from the target’s footprints and an original copy of any document that the target has signed. The ingredients are ground together in a small mortar on a cloudy day, with the grinder facing west and uttering the target’s name and place of origin and spitting into the mortar every 10 minutes. We can’t reveal the more critical subsequent stages because they involve closely guarded trade secrets. What Rannowane describes in his letter is littering, not witchcraft.