These pictures show the horror of "muti murders"

Sangomas (black witch doctors) remove most of the vital organs for their "medicines" including the eyes, the heart, genitals etc. The body parts are then used for various "medicinal" uses and traditional healing practices.

Muti murders are still committed, even in this modern day and age. When the traditional doctor of an evil character calls his assitants to fill up his empty horn, one can be sure of yet another murder to be committed. Not so long ago for instance, a toddler, still alive, was found on a rubbish dump nearby a big city. The little boy was in a shocking condition. His genitals were amputated for possibly the purpose of making muti. The centuries old belief that human blood and parts of the body is essential for the preparation of medicine is still practised even today by many witch doctors. His medicine is known as muti. It is prepared from parts cut from the living body of a human being. The victim is then left to bleed to death.

This is what happens when YOU are the target for muti for witchdoctors

GRAHAMSTOWN -- A 20-year-old Mount Frere mother, Nombovumo Mvinjana, had her facial skin removed with a scalpel and her genitalia, breasts, hands and feet hacked off, probably while still alive, police said.

Residents protested to the authorities after the eight people accused of the murder were granted bail of R1000 each when they appeared in the Mount Frere court recently.

Among the accused are Mvinjana's husband, Sithembele Maqanda, 20, and her uncle Solomzi Govuzela, 37.

The other accused are Siphokazi Sizani, 23, Siziwe Matshoba, 20, Buhlebenkosi Dyakalashe, 30, Zolile Sinyanya, 24, Anderson Zungula, 60, and Lennox Mgandela, 50.

They were not asked to plead.

The murder allegedly took place in a spaza shop owner's home in April.

Police suspect the victim's body parts were to be used as the ingredients for a diabolical get-rich-quick spell called ukutwalela ubutyebi, where fresh human remains are smeared over a person or eaten.

The investigating officer, Captain Xolani Madladlani, said the community feared that a key witness could be intimidated or even killed. The witness was apparently chased from the murder scene after being deemed untrustworthy by the attackers.

Police say Mvinjana begged the gang to let her pray, but was allegedly told: "There is no time for prayer."

Investigators believe her face was first skinned with a scalpel and then the other parts were hacked off with knives. An apple was stuffed in her mouth to stifle her screams.

Police believe she lived for over an hour before succumbing to her wounds. Madladlani said he revived the investigation into the murder when he saw it was heading for an inquest -- often the way a case was quietly swept under the carpet in his part of the world, he said.

"The case was not being done properly," he added.

When Maqanda was arrested he allegedly told police he would take them to a hole in a cliff where he had stashed the R5000 he got for his role in the murder.

But when they got there Maqanda jumped off the cliff, only to survive with bruised ribs.

Madladlani said: "The Lord works in wonderful ways."

He said he was shocked that the accused were granted bail, because they had already threatened witnesses and members of the community. He also feared the accused would abscond in rural Transkei.

The gang allegedly used two young women to lure the victim to her death on the pretext that they had a job lined up for her in Cape Town.

*Mvinjana leaves a seven-month-old baby, who is being cared for by a grandmother. -- ECN

http://www.dispatch.co.za/2001/10/30/easterncape/EMURDER.HTM?FACTNet

The following is a gruesome document. Do not read it if you are sensitive to issues relating to death, mutilation, child abuse and cultic behaviour.

This document is a FACTNet alert and a call to arms.Tuesday, 2 April, 2002, 10:00 GMT 11:00 UK 

Last September a boy's torso was found in the Thames. Police now believe it could have been a "muti" killing, a human sacrifice practiced in southern Africa. Here, as seen in a BBC Two documentary, a mother reflects how she was forced to help kill her own child. 

Helen Madide, of the Thohoyandou area in South Africa, was 18-years-old when she became a social pariah. 

She was the mother of a toddler named Fulufhuwani and was separated from his father, Naledzani Mabuda, a traditional healer known as a sangoma...

While most of the 70,000 sangomas in South Africa provide herbal remedies for minor ailments, some crave more potent ingredients to practice muti, the Zulu word for medicine. 

"He began to tell me stories. His ancestors said that he must kill me and the child so that he can be rich," Helen told Nobody's Child, a BBC documentary on the investigation into the London boy's death. 

"He showed me the path and forced me to go along that path. He was pushing me and demanding me to go whether I like it or not. He said he was going to kill the baby first while I see the baby, then secondly he will kill me." 

Although Helen tried to escape, Mabuda caught her and forced her to hold Fulufhuwani's legs while he cut the child's throat. 

"When the child was dead, he started to cut all those pieces, the hands, the legs and even the sex organs," Helen says. 

Limbs from children, primarily the sexual organs, are said to be the most potent. These are sometimes taken from live victims because their screams are thought to enhance the power of the medicines...

Mabuda then locked Helen up with the child's body. But his relatives, fearing for his wife and child, called the police...

Conservative estimates are that at least 300 people have been murdered for their body parts in the past decade in South Africa. 

And Dr Anthony Minnar, of the Institute for Human Rights and Criminal Justice in South Africa, fears the toll could be much higher. 

"We have children going missing every week from our townships," he says. "The assumption is that those missing children are being put into prostitution and also that they are being used for muti murder."...

But the police have found it difficult to investigate because in such cases, no-one is prepared to come forward. 

Similarly in London, little progress has been made on identifying the torso of the boy which was found in the Thames last September - or his killers. Whether or not he was indeed the UK's first recorded victim of a muti killing, the Metropolitan Police are convinced it was ritualistic. 

Among the South African experts advising them is Colonel Jonker, who has retired from that country's Occult Crime Unit. 

He says: "If there's a guy operating in London, he's going to need body parts again." 

.....end of Fair Use educational extract . To Read the full article, go to

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1899000/1899609.stm

To read more about Samngomas and muti medicine:

http://www.factnet.org/cults/Sangoma/index.html

source: http://www.factnet.org/cults/Sangoma/Muti_Murder.html?FACTNet

Obviously some people find this vocation an honourable one and not every sangoma goes around killing people or mutilating babies.

In this photo essay Wim van Binsbergen presents further images from his initiation as sangoma in the major town of Francistown and in the neighbouring village of Mashelagabedi, 1989-1991.

All photos are copyright © 2004 Wim van Binsbergen

Wim van Binsbergen, Jeannette, a senior sangoma, feeds Wim his first complete meal, with inside meat, after his graduation.

A goat is sacrificed as one of the highlights of his graduation ceremony as a sangoma at the homestead, 1991; Willem on the left.

A sangoma surgery

Throwing the sacred tablets

source: http://come.to/sangoma