Columnists
Absurdity of finding gold in bald-headed men
If the Mozambican witch doctors hear of Makokonyigo village in Luwero District, two witch doctors in southern Mozambique were arrested for killing two bald-headed men, decapitating their heads in search for gold in the pates.
Two weeks ago, Sentimba Mayanja, a witch doctor of Makokonyigo was arrested having been found with two skulls, apart from a decomposing body of a girl. The courts will in due course reveal the origin of the skulls, but from whomsoever Mayanja had, either killed, or exhumed their bodies to get skulls, it will be interesting to know whether his concern was for gold, as is with this Mozambican colleagues.
The cadaver of the girl is explainable as the fascination of the witch doctors and their clients to kill children for sacrifices for their blood and some body parts. Some years ago, such a witch doctor was arrested in Masaka for the murder of a young boy for such. The blame must also, especially to politicians, who are reputed to be doing such things for power purposes.
There have been disappearances of children all over Uganda, suspected for the purposes of bleeding them dry and cutting of their body parts for witchcraft purposes. In many cases the whereabouts of these children have never been unearthed.
The incidences of the witch doctors looking for wealth in skulls, or body parts, especially of albinos in Tanzania – and to a lesser extent – in Uganda and Malawi, is becoming alarming. During the recent United Nations Day of Albinos, Ugandans with albinism wanted the Government to give them tax rebates for the cream products that treat their skins.
In a sense, this would be an obvious request which the Government officials concerned should not even have been reminded of; they should have considered it their public duty to assist the albinos help themselves. It would go a long way towards removing the stigma against albinism.
That being the case, the problem the Mozambican witch doctors are bringing to Africa is multi-faceted. Initially, they are bringing Africa’s leadership into sharp focus for a laughing stock, if the Mozambican government does not stamp this ridiculousness from its inception.
The rest of the world is going to think that poverty in Africa has reached a level that it has reduced Africans to murdering people at will – even where it is obvious that one cannot find gold in the head of a bald-headed man!
The government in Maputo must tell its people that gold can only be dug from the ground. If the witch doctors and their clients want to be rich through gold, they must become gold miners. Gold cannot be mined from bald heads; it is only the mushy brain matter that is housed in the skull – not gold – in the name of God!
In any case, for these witch doctors in Mozambique, if they thought there was gold there, then they should have gone for the ultimate bald man in Mozambique – former president, Joachim Chissano; maybe they would have found the whole of Chissano’s body as gold bullion.
The argument that he would be a security risk would even have given them, if Chissano is still going around with bodyguards, a bigger incentive. Lacking that, it shows how bereft these witch doctors are; having any sense of understanding where gold is to be found.
Probably, the discovery of skulls in Makokonyigo was Mayanja’s point of gold-digging. If that was the case, then he was in initial stages of discovery. It is good that Mayanja has been stopped in his tracks at this point.
Had he not been arrested, it is possible that Mayanja would have graduated from his village to start hunting for bald me in the Luwero Municipality and then proceeded to Kampala. Here, he would have discovered plenty of bald heads.
Even for men who are not bald, it has become a fad and a fashion to shave off all the hair in the Chinese Shaolin tradition. Those already bald-headed tend to shave off the rest of the hair in order to disguise their pates. In that case, unless Mayanja, or his accomplices were very keen on tracking bald men, they would have been going around murdering people who are not even naturally bald-headed because of the Shaolin Shave.