Posted on 11/25/2002 6:51:11 PM PST by FreedomCalls
A MACABRE trade in human body parts was the motive behind the gruesome killing of an elderly woman in the Kavango Region last month, two murder suspects said on Friday.
Murder victim Thihawa Thihaka was killed with the intention of culling her heart, liver and hands and selling them, Magistrate FM Mukasa was told when three young residents of the village of Popa appeared before him in the Rundu Magistrate's Court. They are accused of murder and violating a dead human body.
In the end, claimed one of the suspects, only her heart, liver, ears, eyes and part of her nose were sold.
The plan to also sell her forearms, which were cut off after the murder, did not materialise, the court was told.
It was the finding of these body parts late last month that alerted the authorities to the fact that a horrific crime had been committed in the Popa area.
The trio did not say for what purpose the body parts were sold, although it is speculated that they were to be used in witchcraft rituals.
The three suspects were arrested on Friday, a little over two weeks after two children in the Popa Falls area made a shocking discovery of two severed human forearms and hands.
The body parts were found in a plastic shopping bag hanging from a tree near the Popa Falls tourist camp.
At the time, the identity of the victim remained unknown, and it was speculated that the arms could belong to a teenaged child.
Up to Friday the rest of the body had not been discovered. According to suspects Haushiku Moyo (21) and Simon Ruvetha (28), who were both startlingly open when they gave detailed accounts of the killing and its aftermath during their first court appearance before the weekend, Thihaka's body was dumped into the Kavango River after she had been killed and partially dismembered.
Moyo and Ruvetha pleaded guilty to both charges on Friday. Moyo told the court that the alleged victim, the elderly Thihawa Thihaka, was his grandmother.
The third accused, Manyandero Erastus (18), denied any knowledge of the grisly killing, after his two co-accused claimed that he was the person who stabbed Thihaka to death.
According to Moyo, Erastus and Ruvetha suggested that they should kill his grandmother and sell her body parts when they found him in a shebeen. He initially balked at the prospect, but then agreed to join in the plot.
They found Thihaka in a mahangu (millet) field on a Monday morning in October, Ruvetha said in court. He claimed she was a witch. He grabbed her by her neck and held her, he admitted. Moyo admitted that he held her hands.
While she was being held, they both said, Erastus stabbed Thihaka to death, inflicting two knife stabs to each side of her upper body.
Moyo described to the court how she fell down, kicked and made gurgling sounds as she died.
According to Moyo, Ruvetha then cut off the elderly woman's hands, removed her heart, liver, and eyes, and also cut off her ears and part of her nose.
Having gathered this macabre harvest, they left the scene, returning that night to remove the remainder of the body, which they threw into the Kavango River close to a nearby church, Moyo said.
Moyo and Ruvetha both told the court that it was Moyo who carried the murdered woman's arms away from the scene in a bag.
Moyo added that Ruvetha carried off the other parts that they had removed from the body.
Moyo complained in court that he did not see a cent of the proceeds after the body parts had been sold.
The trio was remanded in custody, until they have to make another court appearance in a month's time.
Public Prosecutor Pine Pienaar put the charges against them. The three accused appeared without legal representation.
Outrageous!
They have none, while we have such an abundance. Surely we could spare a few?
'Tis the season, afterall.
I think that there are some moral absolutes. Killing your Grandma, cutting out her internal organs, cutting off selected body parts, and trapsing down to the market to sell it as bush meat is, I am firmly sure, over the line.
I don't get it.
I don't get it.
Well, they didn't want the forearms. He couldn't sell them. The market for forearms has just dried up recently, ya know.
All kidding aside, I suppose he sold the organs for bush meat. "Bush meat" in Africa is usually the meat of apes (gorillas, chimps, and such). It fetches a good deal of money at the market for the poacher. There is considerable demand. The "witch" trade also needs body parts.
You have to trade in your comfy notions of a civilized society when we talk of modern-day Africa. It exists in a wholly different place separate from our western culture. There has been no Greek democratic tradition, no Roman imposed order, no religious reformation, no age of reason, no scientific method, no industrial revolution as has visited us. The continent has tremendous potential, but as long as the likes of Mugabe and Taylor rule the lands with the blessings of the EU-rocrats, we may not live to see it be realized.
Ewww! "Bush meat" and "witch trade".
No wonder these ooga-boogas are so far behind the rest of the civilized world when it comes to every measurable comparison.
That's right. You think. But who are you to judge? In their culture, cutting out Grandmas internal organs may be a perfectly acceptable practice. After all, these are poor people who are barely surviving on their daily caloric intake. They need grandma's heart and liver to eat.
The lesson for America is that we must let go of our imperialistic moralizing condecension of primitive cultures, and instead celebrate them. We must welcome them into America and celebrate their diversity and our acceptance of multiculturiam.
Fortunately, although American society in general is not yet ready to embrace the customs of primitive societies, our educational institutions are, beginning in the K-12 public government schools and continuing to the highest level of our Ivy League graduate schools.
As our federal Department of Education continues to grow, so will the acceptance of our youth to the very different multi-cultural practices of our diverse society.
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