By IPS Correspondents
LUSAKA, Feb 23 1996 (IPS)

The climate of suspicion created here by reports that children are being abducted and killed in ritual murders has led to mob lynchings of suspected abductors.

Three men have been lynched in the past eight days, while at least four others narrowly escaped being killed by mobs.

“Don’t even dare give candy to a child in the streets – you will be lynched, my friend,” Bwanali Daka, a private investigator here, told IPS, and he wasn’t joking.

One man was killed in Kalingalinga Compound, a Lusaka township, for doing just that, while another was almost stoned to death in the capital’s Matero township because he had stood for some time watching boys playing soccer on a vacant lot.

The man was saved by a neighbourhood resident who allowed him to run into his house. He was shown on television, swathed in bandages, after doctors patched him up.

Two other near-lynchings have been reported in low-income neighbourhoods in Lusaka. In one case, the victim picked up a child who had strayed too far from his mother, a street vendor, just as she noticed her infant’s disappearance and raised an alarm.

The man was rescued by officers from a nearby police station.

According to psychologist Geoffrey Siamsungwa, the lynchings appear to be a “platform through which people express their frustrations with a system of justice in which the guilty are perceived immune to the law, getting away with the most heinous of crimes in the name of human rights and the rule of law.”

The abduction fear was sparked by reports from the southern towns of Mazabuka and Livingstone that gangs were kidnapping children and selling them to Zambians of Asian origin who allegedly killed them in ritual murders to gain wealth.

Livingstone residents went on an orgy of looting and rioting late last year after reports that human organs, apparently belonging to children, were found in an Asian’s shop. Two Zambians of Asian origin were later arrested in the town and jointly charged with the murder of eight children.

Comments Siamsungwa, who is also a sociologist: “Isn’t it strange that these so-called ritual murder cases and backlashes are following hotly on the heels of each other. First it was Mazabuka – Asians were accused.

“Then Livingstone followed and Asians again were cited as key partners in the grizzly trade; now Lusaka and though they have not said it yet, officially that is, the finger is pointing at Asians once more.

Siamsungwa feels all this is linked to resentment at the Asians’ success in business coupled with the fact that the general population knows little about their closed community, something which fosters speculation and rumours.

“It could be that the indigenous Zambians blame the Asians for a number of ills being suffered and their success in trading is seen largely as some kind of voodoo/black magic/witchcraft inspired thing,” he told IPS.

“And the Zambian (black) collaborators are seen as the ones selling children for parts to be used in the charms for success by the Asians,” added Siamsungwa.

In fact, when, according to unconfirmed reports, a gang of men recently attempted to kidnap children at the Timothy Mwanakatwe primary school in Matero, people were quick to suggest that they were in league with Asian business people.

Sifting out the truth from the host of allegations has proved difficult. According to the police, there have been no confirmed cases of kidnappings in Lusaka, not even the alleged incident at the school.

“We have received no genuine report of child abduction nor found a child’s body with missing organs,” said police spokesman Francis Musonda. “So far, three people have been killed on mere suspicion by mobs which thought they were trying to abduct children.”

He charged that some women have started exploiting the rumours to get back at their husbands in child custody disputes.

“A man was almost killed at Soweto market (in Lusaka) after a woman shouted that he had stolen her child,” said Musonda. “We later discovered, after the man was left within inches of death, that he was the actual father of the said child. There has been another similar case as well.”

But people in Lusaka’s townships are unconvinced by the police denials.

“What about the incident that happened at Timothy Mwanakatwe Primary School in which a group of men went into the school yard with a DCM minibus, held up a teacher in class and loaded the bus with his classful of children,” said a street vendor in Matero.

“The children were only rescued by quick action of concerned members of the community. Go there and find out for yourself, we are not lying. The police are hiding facts,” added the vendor, who refused to give her name, saying: “I do not want to be a witness. Sorry.”

When IPS went to the school to find out whether there had, in fact, been a kidnapping attempt, it was as if children and teachers alike had been warned not to talk about the matter. “You’ll get me into trouble, please leave me alone,” said one teacher, while other responses were more or less the same.

Whether or not the various reports are true, they have created such a climate of fear among parents that a few have temporarily stopped sending their children to school, while others accompany their offspring to and from their institutions of learning.

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