In the middle of February, in Mwanza in the west of the country, a young child by the name of Yohana Bahati was snatched from his mother’s arms and brutally murdered. He was killed because his murderers were harvesting his body parts for sorcery.

The fury this has caused among the general public is white-hot. There is, however, a large area of our social lives and collective responsibility that has yet to be raised in our public discussions about the issue.

Every so often stories will appear in the papers about a witch or wizard falling out of the sky while in transit in their flying basket. And far too many of my fellow citizens are convinced that the Freemasons are a secret society of people who use supernatural means to gain wealth and power.

And I heard somewhere unquotable that most of us Tanzanians have at some point in time consulted a, uh, “consultant” for help with standard life troubles such as like unrequited love, anaemic bank accounts, business rivals, etc.

Three years ago, an old gentleman in the northeast of the country claimed to have found a miraculous combination of Christian evangelism and herbalism that empowered him to create a cure-all potion. One cup of his elixir was guaranteed to make your troubles go away, be they lifestyle diseases that were expensive to treat or pesky viral diseases of the HIV/Aids variety or whatever. Remember “Kikombe cha Babu?” Of course you do.

He was visited by everyone who could make it there. The wealthy took helicopters, the rich flew in, the well-off drove there in all-terrain vehicles, folk got on buses chartered or otherwise. Let’s not forget the direct service from Nairobi to Loliondo either, eh?

For years, people living with albinism have been subjected to unconscionable terror because of a belief that their body parts can be used in witchcraft. What drives all of the examples and practices that have been mentioned is a strong belief in the supernatural. Magic is a part of our culture.

Oh, how I used to save my disbelief and rage for Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia and his shenanigans. How I used to delight in being thin-skinned about the eternally racist fascination with African dictators and cannibalism, or Africans and cannibalism full stop. Never suspecting that Tanzania would succumb so completely to the practice of ritual human sacrifice.

Religion has been offered as a way to address this propensity, which is fine except that officially speaking all Tanzanians identify themselves as God-fearing... while simultaneously supporting an industry in the supernatural that is thriving so well you can hardly walk by an intersection in Dar without seeing signs advertising the services of a “doctor.” This level of hypocrisy has proved itself to be dangerous.

When it comes to eradicating the murder of people with albinism, two solutions have been offered that may be truly effective. First there is the matter of education that goes way beyond public information campaigns.

Something as simple as understanding what causes albinism in the first place would effectively remove any mystique that is attached to people with albinism. This is a cultural shift that we need to embrace. Knowledge, science, rationality remain the best tools humans have developed against the frightening darkness of what we don’t understand.

Most immediately, we need to see the prosecution of the end-users of the products of witchcraft. This is where the government’s commitment gets tested. The police do investigate attacks on people with albinism, and arrests get made. Yet things never seem to progress further than the incarceration of a few criminals at the bottom of the supply hierarchy.

There is an oft-quoted street price on people living with albinism, which I won’t quote here because it is disgusting to cost a human life. Suffice it to say that it is so high, the implications are dire. It is this that has people enraged and suspecting the political class of being complicit.

Other controversies such as garden-variety corruption, bureaucratic incompetence and the like do not carry the same weight as the murder of people with albinism does. This goes deeply into what Tanzania envisions itself as — not even the Constitution touches on matters of identity at this level.

Hence the outrage; the citizenry has spoken and we’re saying we don’t want to live in a republic that tacitly condones human sacrifice.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]