albino death sentence
Kidnapped and sacrificed by Malawi gangs on the hunt for election charms
It was a real-life Sophie’s choice: with the albino-hunting gang advancing through her house, Misa Maulidi had seconds to decide which of her children to save and which to abandon to the men who wanted to sacrifice them.
She had always feared this would happen, particularly with Malawi’s general election looming and politicians reportedly in the market for albino body parts to use in the witchcraft rituals meant to help them win their seats.
It was why she and her extended family had chosen to live in a remote homestead deep in the tobacco plantations of central Malawi, miles from dedza, the nearest town.
Here, secluded from the outside world but with security in numbers, she hoped she could safely raise Goodson, her 14-year-old son, and Faith, his three-year-old sister, both born with albinism, a genetic condition that bleaches the skin, hair and eyes white.
But then, a little before midnight on Feb 12, five machete-wielding men smashed down the door of her hut. Maulidi, who is black, realized immediately what they wanted, but knew she couldn’t save both her children.
She scooped up Faith, dodged past the men into the bush and shouted frantically to Goodson to run to the neighbouring hut where her father and brother slept.
His relatives did everything they could to prise the terrified boy from his attackers’ grasp. Four of Goodson’s relatives, including both his grandmothers, received deep machete cuts as they fought with their bare hands to save him.
It was to no avail. Goodson Makanjira was dragged into a waiting car. He has not been seen since.
Like Sophie, the character in Sophie’s Choice, William Styron’s novel, who had to choose one of her children to be gassed at Auschwitz, Maulidi — who has sent her daughter to a safe house in the south — says she will forever be haunted by her decision.
“I was alone, half asleep, confused,” she said. “I grabbed my daughter and ran to hide in a graveyard hidden in the bush. I just prayed the others would be able to save my son. I was wrong.”
Goodson’s family cannot bring themselves to voice what might have happened to him since he vanished down that dusty road toward distant dedza. Given what has happened to a growing number of albinos in Malawi, his likely fate is too horrifying to contemplate.
For Malawi’s 10,000-odd albinos, being born with the condition is a curse. Their fathers often desert them at birth, believing wives have been unfaithful with a white man.
At school they face bullying. Many suffer semi-blindness and risk skin cancer from the mercilessness of the African sun. But worse, they live in a society where too many only value them dead.
Those captured by the albino-hunting gangs are either killed immediately or taken to places of ritual sacrifice by rivers. There, witch doctors can wash away the blood as they remove the innards and limbs of their victims, according to activists and the testimony of some witch doctors themselves.
The killings, it is widely believed, are done to order, carried out by an organized criminal network acting on behalf of rich clients willing to pay thousands of dollars for albino body parts believed to bring wealth and political good fortune.
Who those clients are no one knows, for none have ever been brought to trial. But senior government and opposition figures, who say they themselves have been urged to go to witch doctors when the political winds have blown against them, believe that politicians are involved in the trade.
Attempts to document albino killings only began in late 2014 after activists noticed an increase in attacks in the build up to Malawi’s general election earlier that year.
Since then, the Association of Persons with Albinism in Malawi (APAM) has documented 25 murders, 15 disappearances and 122 cases of attempted abductions and the exhumation of albino bodies from graves. With another election due to take place in May, activists say there has again been a surge in attacks.
Even Peter Mutharika, Malawi’s president, has been implicated, while the personal bodyguard of Lazarus Chakwera, a leading opposition candidate, has been arrested.
Since New year’s Eve, when a gang entered the Kwenda Phiri family home in Nkhata Bay on the shores of Lake Malawi, there have been at least 11 attacks, according to Ian Simbota, APAM’S secretary-general.
Some time before midnight on Jan 31, as the revelry grew more raucous outside, George Kwenda Phiri crept into his parents’ bedroom only to find four men standing over his groaning albino father.
George, who is nine, watched as his dying father was dismembered and disembowelled.
Three weeks later, Loness Nkhonjera briefly left her house in northern Malawi to use the lavatory in the early hours of the morning. When she went back inside a few minutes later, Eunice, her 18-month old albino daughter, had vanished.
Crude superstitious beliefs are widespread in Africa, with albino attacks reported in 28 countries across the continent. But nowhere in Africa is it more dangerous to be an albino than Malawi, activists reckon. A first step in fixing the problem, they say, is to hold accountable those behind the killings.
yet, if anything, solving crimes against albinos is becoming ever harder amid allegations of a high-level cover-up. Since the beginning of the year, two key suspects who may have held vital clues about the attacks have died mysteriously after being taken into custody, including Buleya Lule, accused of being in the car that carried away Goodson Makanjira. It was found that he had been beaten and electrocuted while in detention.
His death does not necessarily suggest a conspiracy, says Hetherwick Ntaba, the president’s chief domestic policy adviser and chairman of the government’s task force on albinism issues. “The other side of the coin in all this is that the police, desperately trying to extract information from suspects may simply, in their frustration, have got carried away in their physical interrogations,” he said.
The government’s response has done little to quell allegations of a political conspiracy, in which even Ntaba has been implicated.
The most damaging allegations have been made by Bon Kalindo, an opposition lawmaker.
While in custody in January on charges of insulting the president in song, he says he interviewed suspects charged with murdering a young albino man in 2015.
He claims they told him that the president and Ntaba were among those involved in the trade in albino body parts. Leaked audio recordings made by the same suspects making similar claims have been circulated widely in Malawi.
President Mutharika’s government strongly denies the allegations, suggesting that, in a chronically corrupt country whose people are the world’s sixth poorest, his accusers may have been bribed by the opposition as part of a pre-election smear campaign.
“It is a total fabrication,” Ntaba said. “They are using albinism issues as a campaign tool to tarnish the image of the president and the government.”
Amid the claims and denials, successful prosecutions look further away than ever.
i was alone, half asleep, confused. i grabbed My daughter and ran to hide in a graveyard hidden in the bush. i just prayed the others would be able to save My son. i was wrong. — Misa Maulidi, on albino-hunting gangs