The New Observer
March 21, 2013
An African witchdoctor from the country of Lesotho was found boiling body parts belonging to a murdered white South African farmer when he was arrested, a court in South Africa has heard.
As reported in the Afrikaans-language newspaper Volksblad, Moeketsi Hopolong Mokoena (34), a witchdoctor (a profession also called a “traditional healer”) was busy cooking the body parts of Jan van Wyk (82) of the farm Jakkalsfontein, when a private security company swooped on the murder scene.
The Free State Supreme Court heard that Mokoena was busy cooking the body parts in a pot in Van Wyk’s house.
According to the charge sheet read before the court, Mokoena started off by asking for food at a farmhouse owned by Basie and Mary Venter, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from the Van Wyk farmhouse.
While Mary Venter was kindly preparing some food for the black man, she heard the farm dogs start barking. Running outside, she saw Mokoena beating her 65-year-old husband to death with an iron bar.
One of the Venters’ farmworkers then arrived on the scene, and Mokoena fled into the darkness.
Private guards from a local white-owned security firm (often used by white South Africans instead of the police, who are notoriously ineffectual) arrived to start searching for Mokoena, and, following standard procedure, started off by going to neighboring farmsteads, focusing on the Van Wyk house after a friend reported that the 82-year-old had not answered his telephone.
When the guards arrived on the scene, Mokoena was outside on the porch, wearing only a shirt and underpants. His legs were covered in blood. Upon seeing the guards, he ran into the house and closed the door.
The guards forced open the door, and were attacked by Mokoena in the house. They succeed in subduing him and placing him under arrest.
The house had been ransacked and was smeared in blood. Van Wyk’s severely mutilated body was found in the living room.
A further search of the house revealed the pots in the kitchen where Mokoena was busy cooking body parts in apparent preparation for some ritual witchdoctor feast.