adminchildren to help identify the clothes, brings to the fore yet again the dangers to unprotected children. There is a general fear that most missing children are murdered for ritual purposes.
There is little hard evidence to back this up. But children do go missing, the bodies of murdered children are found, a young woman recently tried to sell her newborn baby to a ritual killer, and body parts have been stolen from hospitals.
Underlying this handful of facts there are rumours that there are still people walking around in Zimbabwe in the 21st century who believe that murdering a child and having body parts processed in a particular way will give them material riches, and that there are people prepared to murder. There are even rumours that some more modern and secret cults may be willing to absorb these older beliefs. There are good grounds to suspect that more children may be unaccounted for than just the list of those reported missing. While street children do form protective networks, no one really knows if all children living on the street are accounted for. And the recent court case of a young mother trying to sell a baby suggests that this might not be the first such case.
Zimbabwe cannot tolerate or be indifferent to all of this. So what do we do?
First parents must be more protective.
They need to ensure that a responsible adult, and that should be someone older than a recently employed 16-year-old maid, can see the child at all times. Very little effort would be needed to form “walking clubs” in most streets so that parents take it in turns to escort the neighbourhood’s children to and from school.
Even in rural areas, where children walk to school in large groups past fields where everyone knows them, their parents and probably their grandparents, modest organisation could turn such community care into something more certain.
Dangers to children are increasing all over the world; in some countries it is paedophiles who hunt unaccompanied children, and there are cases of such perverts travelling the world looking for victims. In Zimbabwe it may be a different sort of pervert, a murderer who believes in witchcraft. But whatever the reason, the growing urbanisation of the world, the greater mobility of people, and growing population densities all mean that more and more children will be among strangers when outside their home.
We all tell our children never to talk to strangers, never accept sweets or lifts, and always be ready to run to the nearest house for help. But a friendly or trusted adult eye can raise safety several levels.
Secondly, ordinary people can be more aware. People don’t like to interfere, but anyone seeing a child being mistreated should investigate.
Thirdly, the police need to move more surely against the n’angas who could be ready to process body parts of murdered children. The killers are difficult to find; they tend to commit this dreadful crime once, and have no record. But there cannot be many traditional healers who are willing to renounce their healing calling and turn to evil. Zinatha will not protect them and will even be able to assist the police in drawing up a generic profile of the sort of n’anga who might have turned.
Solid detective work could penetrate the veils of secrecy and superstition and hunt these men down. At the very least a concerted campaign would force them to move away from that way of life for fear of being caught. We reckon that the n’anga who processes a body part and gives instructions over how a child should be killed is equally guilty of the murder. There has been reluctance in the past, in the odd cases where a killer was found, to go for the n’anga as well. But in this day and age it should be easy to find suitable policemen and women who would have no qualms about hunting down such a person.
We doubt that there is an increase in such crimes. We think that in the past there was a reluctance to report them, so statistics are almost certain to be faulty.
And, as with the apparent growth of paedophilia, the fact that we are better at protecting all children means that those desiring evil are no longer able to prey on abandoned or forgotten children, or are able to come to financial arrangements with evil relatives.
Perhaps some of the missing children have come to an accidental end, fallen down a disused well or been killed by a crocodile. But until there is a concerted effort to eliminate ritual killings and go further in finding missing children we will not know. And, parents need to remember, that better protection for children also means that they are better protected against accidents as well as perverts and killers.
Online Reporter