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TSIKAMUTANDA witch hunters are on their way to our village. A few weeks ago, somewhere along the Save River, they found many witches and wizards in possession of  various gnome-like creatures called zvikwambos, tokoloshi, zvidhoma, snakes, heavy breathing frogs and other fetishes used to practise witchcraft.
Each person accused of practising witchcraft was fined a whole beast. These objects of evil were publicly displayed and burnt. They said Tsikamutanda and his team took 20 or 30 cows from some villages. Since village people are really poor and they struggle to get just one dollar to pay for grinding mill services, there was a problem in selling the cattle. Tsikamutanda hired some local men to take the cattle to the nearest market for sale. Normally, a cow sells for up to US$400 in the villages. But for the local businessmen and butchers, it was Christmas time. They scooped the beasts easily for fewer than US$150 each. With their work done,  vana Sekuru Tsikamutanda  got back into the cars and drove away leaving the villages along the Save River totally “clean” of evil. No more witches. Death or illness will not be seen here. That is the belief.

When Tsikamutanda sent a messenger to say he was coming to our village, the kraal head, Sabhuku wedu, was very pleased. Finally, we will be rid of all the witches and wizards responsible for killing people who died around our villages, he said. It did not matter that some of the siblings and cousins live far; he said the witches have the power to do witchcraft business over night. They can fly from here to Melbourne, Raleigh in North Carolina or London overnight, returning home before sunrise.

So my brother Sydney called me and Piri saying we must be prepared to come back to the village from Harare immediately because the very next day or so, Tsikamutanda was cleansing the whole village, including my late mother’s homestead. Sydney said it was particularly important that we get to the village and touch Tsikamutanda’s magical walking stick or tsvimbo before the ceremony. The process of touching tsvimbo,  kubatiswa tsvimbo, means we will  be confirming that we are willing participants in getting our homestead cleansed of any witchcraft tools that might have been placed somewhere around the home with or without our knowledge. Only Tsikamutanda would know where these witchcraft tools were hidden.

Sydney was with my friend Bhiya. They put the phone on speaker and said I should be very careful not to dismiss Tsikamutanda. To prove Tsikamutanda’s power, Bhiya told us the story about a very well-to-do family in Hwedza who did not believe in witchcraft because they had Western education. But one of the family elders insisted that Tsikamutanda come to hunt for the evil fetishes.

Right inside a big pot in the granary, muhozi, belonging to the grandmother who had been dead for 10 years, Tsikamutanda found a big python nicely curled up. He said the snake had been hired by the grandmother many years ago to bring good luck to the family. All the success in the family including medical and law degrees, supermarkets and buses came as a result of that snake lying low in the village homestead, spiting luck and good will to close family in Zimbabwe and overseas. While the snake gave this one family luck, it caused death, disability and mental illness to the rest of the extended family members.

Tsikamutanda held the snake by the tail and announced that the python had to go.
“It was killed and burnt right in front of the people,” Bhiya said. In the background, we could hear our neighbour Jemba adding more information on Tsikamutanda’s miraculous works in Hwedza. Piri grabbed the phone from me and shouted into the speaker phone, “How do you know that Tsikamutanda and team did not bring the python with them? Since when do pythons help people to write law and medical degrees? Listen, I heard that Tsikamutanda and team were almost arrested in some Hwedza villages. Then they ran away to Chikomba. You are being foolish and gullible. Mazirema. Mombe dzichapera.”

But Sydney was adamant. He said everyone in our village, mubhuku redu, knows that there have been serious witchcraft practices resulting in a lot of misfortune, illness and deaths in the family during the past few years.

“We need the village cleansed, just like everyone else. You have to be here to prove that what they are doing is fake,” Sydney said.
Then he went on to say that we, as a family, had not gone around to traditional healers, n’angas and prophets to find out how my sister Charity and my mother died in the past two years. After these two deaths, we should have followed tradition and searched for the witch responsible for killing them. People do not die, just like that; they are bewitched. “Hatina kumbofamba,” Sydney said. Piri then shouted again, saying, “Bhudhi, who do you think is responsible for the deaths?”

“I cannot tell you what I already know over the phone. Just come and see what Tsikamutanda can do,” Sydney said. Piri stood there and gave a smirk. Then she shouted into the phone saying, “Bhudhi, witches have always been around. What is new? How can someone called Tsikamutanda, of a totem we do not know, coming from a place we do not know, tell us that he can cleanse our village and then demand a whole cow? Many years ago, we were cut with nyora to stop illnesses, but some of us still died. Anna died very young and she had many nyora marks on her to stop witches from eating her. But she died.”

While talking, Piri pulled my sleeve down and pointed to the nyora marks on my shoulder blades, testimony to the early years of our childhood, when we lived so close together and witchcraft was real. They are two fine tattoo black lines of nyora.

When we were growing up in the village before independence, people did not die as much as they do now. The only death I remember very well was that of my cousin Anna. An evil witch and her group of witches ate her because she was very fair skinned and fat. She was eight, or maybe ten, I cannot remember. She was my father’s brother’s daughter, the same way Piri is to me. We played together in the village compound. Sometimes Anna did not come out to play because her joints and her chest were sore, aive nechikosoro. Anna had nyora marks to protect or heal her on the thighs, stomach and both ankles.

One day after eating sadza and dried meat, she started vomiting. All night, she was vomiting and by morning, they said Anna was dead.
They buried her on the anthill near the Mudzambiringa tree, right in the fields behind the homestead. It was whispered that the witches responsible for Anna’s death rode their hyenas and raided Anna’s grave in the pitch night darkness when were sound asleep.
Anna’s flesh was all gone and only her skeleton remained.

We avoided walking near Anna’s grave in case her angry skeleton leapt out to curse the witches. Her cement grave is still there and I still fear going past it.

To prevent more deaths in the village compound after Anna’s death, Mbuya and the other elders called Murefu, the village n’anga or traditional healer. Some people called him the witchdoctor. But that was just a bad name used by the missionaries and colonial administrators. Murefu came one dark night to cut protective nyora marks on all the village children. He wore a head dress made of brown feathers and a leopard skin and some other rag-like clothing. He was a big tall man with scary eyes. Unsmiling, he walked in with his bag full of  magical tools.

We were lined up according to age. Murefu pinched the skin near the little fingers, little toes, shoulder blades and on the chest in between where the two collar bones met. Two cuts on each child using one razor blade. (That was long before HIV and Aids arrived.)
Then he rubbed a thick black liquid consisting of oil and ash.

He kept on rubbing it until the blood stopped coming out. The following day, the cuts were clean cut with just the mark of the black liquid.
When the cut dried up, we had permanent nyora scars. Today, they look like two fine line tattoos and very prominent on the shoulder blades: “tribal” marks of where we came from.

Murefu cut nyora to protect us from the diseases of the past, at a time when we were not aware of the diseases that would be caused by our future affluent lifestyles. How could we have known that one day, falling in love and having unprotected sex could lead to the contraction of HIV and Aids?

Besides, Murefu’s ancestors would not have known the medicine for HIV and Aids, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, heart diseases and all these new cancers affecting us.

At the same time, Murefu was a respected n’anga and witch hunter. Although we had no proof, we believed that Murefu had the gift to heal and identify witchcraft.  He understood the relationships between people, our history, culture and traditions. We all knew him and revered his supernatural powers inherited from generations of ancestors. For his services, including cutting nyora and rubbing various herbal medicines and giving us root concoctions, Murefu charged a hen or a pound. His role was to restore village peace, resolve conflicts and promote harmony and hunhu, respect in the family.

Contrary to what the missionaries and colonial administrators said or believed, witchcraft was not just a pagan belief among Africans. Historical studies and records tell us that between 1450 and 1750, approximately 110 000 people were tried for witchcraft in Europe and America and 60 000 of them were executed. These witch hunts were produced by mass hallucinations, insecurity, early modern state building and various forms of religious fundamentalism. That was happening in Europe then. Such events of witch hunting are therefore not unusual or peculiar to Zimbabwe alone.  However, our problem right now lies in the victimisation of innocent people accused of witchcraft and the loss of their livestock.

Still on the phone from Harare, Piri and I tried to reason with Sydney and Bhiya. We reminded them that this was the second time witch hunters came to our village. Few years ago, another Tsikamutanda team supposedly cleansed all bad sprits and evil in our kraal, mubhuku redu. No one was going to die.

In the past two years, my sister Charity, the diplomat, died in 2011 and my mother died in 2012. My mother died from complications of diabetes at the age of 84. In the age of so many diseases and accidents, she had a long fruitful life. Charity died from complications of heart and lung diseases. She was too young to die. But we accept. Tinogashira. Why should we now wait for Tsikamutanda to tell us that it was Babamunini Mozi or someone else who caused the deaths? What does it matter now? Ko vanhu havachafi?

In many parts of rural Zimbabwe we hear that there are many gangs, teams or groups of people calling themselves Bere Dvuku, Red Hyena or Garwe the Crocodile operating under the Tsikamutanda banner. Some of them are young men wearing gold necklaces, driving Mercedes-Benz cars, drinking lager beer and playing pool at the local shops when they are relaxing in between witch hunting. One of them apparently answered his telephone and sent a text during the time he claimed to be possessed with the ancestor’s supernatural spirit to sniff out witches.

Witch hunting used to help promote village peace and provide some sense of security among the people. Not anymore.
It has caused enormous family rifts and conflicts in the villages near ours. Stigma, conflict and hatred have followed such accusations. Following the work of Tsikamutanda, two sons a few kilometres from our village assaulted their father calling him a wizard because Tsikamutanda had said so.

In Unyetu, Mbuya Nduna was forced to part with her cow because they said she was a witch. That was downright cruel.
What if Mbuya Nduna did not have any cattle? Would she have been accused of witchcraft?  Unless Sabhuku and the chiefs protect rural vulnerable old women, who will?

My brother Sydney and Bhiya argued that  each village has a choice to use or not to use the services of Tsikamutanda. But they forget that it is hard for an individual to make a choice, when everyone around is convinced that witches exist.

Besides, choices do not always exist for those who are troubled by witchcraft and the fear of the supernatural. Surely the Zimbabwe Traditional Healers’ Association or the police could help stop some of these practices and protect the poor and vulnerable?

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and works as a development consultant.