Panic and fear has gripped communities north of Pretoria as threats of men on the hunt for children to use for rituals have started doing the rounds on messaging app WhatsApp.
As of early this week a video started doing the rounds where a man can be heard soliciting a woman to identify children he can abduct, to use their blood for rituals.
In the one minute 30 seconds long video, the man is heard telling the woman to find two young girls for him and saying he would be willing to pay her R30 000 for their lives.
When the woman asks for further details, he informs her he has already identified two young girls; however, he still needed two more.
“I need two. I don’t know how you will take them,” he says.
To which the woman responds: “I don’t understand how to find them and by the time you want to take them, will they be gone for good. Or will they ever return?”
“They will never come back, remember I said we are going to use them for rituals because I want to use their blood,” he says.
Parents’ and community fears are seen as justified, given that reports of children being abducted and mutilated for muti killings is nothing new in the country.
In April 2023, two schoolboys were found murdered and mutilated on the outskirts of Johannesburg in what was believed to have been muti killings, where the body parts were “stolen to order” for witchdoctors.
The three young boys were kidnapped in Soweto as they played in a park and only one escaped. His best friends both met horrific deaths. The blood drenched bodies of Nqobile Zulu, 5, and his friend Tshiamo Rabamue, 6, were found with stab wounds, their throats slit, and their genitals, noses and lips cut off.
Nqobile Ndlovu, 50, the grandmother of Tshiamo, and her 39-year-old partner were arrested and charged with the boys’ murder after the police forensic unit combed her home.
Muti killings reportedly involve the removal of body parts while the victim is traditionally still alive, after which they are then taken to ‘sangomas’ to provide potions for their clients.
The SAPS did not reply to queries from Independent Media at the time of publication.
Saturday Star
goitsemang.matlhabe@inl.co.za