
WE have warned in these pages before that the tsikamutanda menace was getting out of hand with these unscrupulous individuals literally getting away with murder and causing mayhem in communities all in the name of hunting for witches. A�
It is quite worrying that all of a sudden the number of witches and wizards has grown exponentially, at least according to the fly-by-night witch-hunters, and it takes these youthful tsikamutandas to sniff them out and neutralise their goblins.
Just as we have always feared and cautioned, one of the tsikamutandas, who is now in trouble with the law after attacking a villager who barred him from doing as he pleased in her homestead, has spilled the beans, saying that he was part of the trickery of the youthful witch-hunters.
He declared that they were all fake and that they had no clue about exorcising evil spirits and even identifying witches.
Elsewhere in this edition we carry an article quoting Lazarus Siziba, a self-confessed tsikamutanda associate who was recently arrested in Matopo over their witch-hunting business, and he admits that they have been duping villagers of their livestock and that no tsikamutanda is genuine.
While we have always known that these witch-hunters are fake, what worries us is the propensity by chiefs and other traditional leaders to sanction these suspicious guysa�� operations in their areas of jurisdiction. Admittedly, these people will not go away overnight since there are those that believe in them and also, we cannot rule out corruption between the traditional leaders and these witch-hunters who accumulate a lot of wealth from impoverished villagers after being cleared by chiefs and headmen.
Representative bodies for traditional healers and faith healers have disowned these unregistered operators, a sign that their operations were not governed by any code of ethics, making them a law unto themselves.
We believe the law should take its course against these unscrupulous people that have sown serious hatred in many communities through their false claims of witchcraft.
We would like to urge communities to resist the encroachment of these suspicious people by working closely with the police and asserting their rights. They have a right to peaceful living and that right cannot be surrendered to people not registered with any authority and whose operations are as translucent as their training and rituals.
The Ministry of Local Government should rein in traditional leaders who are overstepping their mandate by subjecting their subjects to such unscrupulous acts. The longer the authorities take to act firmly on this issue, the greater the damage these fly-by-night medicine men will cause on our communities through sowing discord.Com