Tanzania suffers rise of witchcraft hysteria aimed at elderly
Thousands of elderly people, mostly women, are being accused ofwitchcraft and then murdered or maimed by vigilante groups in Tanzania.But the police and government do little to prevent the deaths.
They came for Lemi Ndaki in the night. “I was sleeping when I heard a noise,” explains the 70-year-old Tanzanian grandmother. “There was no security in my hut and the door was easy to open. I got up to see about the noise and someone grabbed me and chopped off my arm with a machete. I think he came to chop my neck but I raised my hand and he only took my arm.”A neighbour heard her cries and took her to the hospital in Mwanza, the nearest city, a three-hour drive away on the shore of Lake Victoria. “They couldn’t put my arm back on and the scar still hurts, especially when I’m cold.” That is not surprising: the open bone still pokes out from the skin below her elbow, 19 years later.
Other elderly women in her village, Mwamagigisi, haven’t been so lucky. Ng’wana Budodi was shot in the head with an arrow. Kabula Lubambe and Helena Mabula were knifed to death. Ng’wana Ng’ombe was also murdered with a machete, and when her mud hut was set alight, her husband, Sami, was burnt alive.This is the fate awaiting thousands of old people, mostly women, who are accused of witchcraft in this rural and isolated corner of east Africa. The killings are escalating in many areas, perhaps numbering more than 1,000 a year, but the Tanzanian government and police do nothing to stop them.