Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cbclark4]

SA pupils burn 'witches' to death

Wednesday, 5 September 2007

Two South African women have been burned to death after a group of students accused them of bewitching their high school with evil spirits.
Msaba Zungu and Thabitha Thusi, both 60, were seized from their homes near Manguzi in KwaZulu-Natal province.

Students and adults dragged them to a sports field where they were doused with petrol and set alight on Sunday.

Manhlenga High School pupils accused the women of being witches after they began to suffer strange crying fits.

Investigators said Ms Zungu died at the scene and Ms Thusi succumbed to her burns injuries on Monday.

Police captain Jabulani Mdletshe told the BBC News website: "On 17 August, the students at the mixed high school began to cry randomly and they did not know why.

"The students held a couple of meetings and allegedly decided the problem was these two women were witches who had cast a bad muthi (spell) on the school.

"At 8pm on Sunday, some students and community members allegedly took the women from their homes to a football field and set them on fire."

No arrests have been made but police are following a positive line of inquiry, said Capt Mdletshe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6980439.stm

[tomato]

Just when I thought the Inquisition was over!

[jinju]

Ahhhh ... civilization

[ED209]

[Bondgirl]

Far out. Developing societies have sure got some big challenges- Those educators, who would at some point have arrived at a history lesson talking about witch hunts in the US or Europe, were themselves accused in 2007 of being witches.
This raises questions about whether it is acceptable to expect other cultures to live by Western standards. If that is a deep rooted cultural belief- that witches exist still- is 'educating' the people away from such ideas going to have a negative or positive impact on the culture of that society? Is it ok to say ' no, no no, your cultural beliefs are very very wrong- there is no such thing as witches. You mustn't go around killing people you claim are witches'.
Makes us sound like a bunch of missionaries in the mid 1800s sent to convert the savages.
Now the westernized justice system will aim to take care of these people, and is that appropriate? They are going to be so out of their depths -their logic is that it was a perfectly good thing to do, to keep their children safe from witches.
It's going to be a long hard journey to preserve the cultural identities of different groups at the same time as educating in a more or less 'western' manner. We'll have the expectation that their values and beliefs reflect ours, but there are going to be some big holes. What a head-ache.

[twg]

I swear, everyone is going to be pretty shocked when we finally evolve out of the stone age.

[Cheonmunka]

People suck.

[Snowmeow]

Logically, if she weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood! and therefore, a witch! - wisdom of Sir Bedevere, Knight of the Round Table

[Barking Mad Lord Snapcase]

[Barking Mad Lord Snapcase]

[mindmetoo]

[LUCRETIA]

It's important to remember that this kind of thing made the news for a reason - it's not common and has shocked South Africans as much as anyone else. This kind of thing doesn't happen everyday - it's a disturbing, isolated incident that hapened in a tiny, rural South African town.

Bondgirl, your worries about sounding like a missionary from the 1800's are interesting - yet you go on to say that "these people" wil be "out of their depths" in a westernized justice system (?) since they only believed that they were keeping their children safe. It's pretty patronizing to sum it up like that, don't you think?

What I know is that the African concept of "witch" is complex and not really analogous to those from other cultures. I can almost guarantee these students have had little or no education about witches historically. And I also know that the small article in the OP was not nearly half the story. Instead of sighing, "ah, uncivilized Africa" and calling it a "headache", just keep in mind the brutalities that happen in other "western civillized" countries on a regular basis.

South Africa has a bad crime rate, definitely. Is it because they are uncivilized and require a more enlightened justice system? No more than anywhere else.
Believing in witches is an out-there idea, but then again so is believing in Angels, or Allah or spirit guides or human souls or whatever.

Wanting people not to kill each other etc, is not a "western standard" that wayward cultures should aspire to. You think it would go without saying, but Americans and Europeans dont have a monopoly on the idea that its wrong to kill others.

[koon_taung_daeng]

if i was a highschool student living in a rural town in south africa i would be crying all the time to

[pheeeel]

This is the kind of stuff Western media loves reporting about so we can gawk at those backward, silly, africans.
Like a previous poster said, south africans are shocked by this as well. Funny how most of you are lumping all the people of an entire continent together. The people of Johannesburg, Nairobi, and other major African cities look down on the rural folk as backwards, stuck in time, the same way many of you apparently look down on the whole continent.
Not long ago, the BBC reported on an a Sudanese man who was caught having sex with a goat, another story that makes you say "o my, so funny what happens in those caveman countries", another spectable.
Anyway, stereotyping Africans from this story would be the same as judging Europeans because of the actions of these two men:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4618216.stm
Its about a German who helped a man cut off his *beep*, they both tried to eat it, but failed, then one of them ate the other guy. "Ahhhh....civilization."

[Ryst Helmut]