According to government statistics, 46 albinos were murdered in Tanzania between June 2007 and January.

In the same vein, 2,869 people were murdered during 2003-2008 on suspicion that they were witches.

The albino killings are particularly brutal — with, for instance, the victims painfully bleeding to death after their body parts are hacked off.

The objective is to obtain organs like hair, skin, and inner vitals. These fetch inordinately high returns for both the murderers — up to Tsh30 million ($28,600) apiece — and local “witchdoctors.”

The latter apparently use the parts to concoct potions for which their clients pay a small fortune in return for a supposedly inordinate success: Greater fortunes in business or career, promotion workplaces, marital happiness, fertility, etc.

Some perpetrators are desperate enough to take up grave-robbing of body parts from already dead and buried albinos.

Such albino troubles are not new, or unique to Tanzania. For instance, albino women have been raped in Zimbabwe in the belief that this cures HIV/Aids.

Pregnant women refuse to shake hands with albinos — and point them out in admonishing unruly children.

Indeed, albinos are ostracised by society — routinely shunned, positively discriminated against.

But the rate and brutality with which albino killings have picked up in Tanzania has fixed attention on the matter.

The government railed against it, with Premier Mizengo Pinda shedding tears at their plight in Parliament — having suggested as a remedy Biblical eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth reprisals against perpetrators caught in the act.

Addressing the press in Dar es Salaam on February 27, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for “concerted efforts to end the brutality.”

On March 5, the premier launched a secret poll in which Tanzanians will name those they associate with albino killings. Ballots will also be cast for “known” witchdoctors, necromancers, grave-robbers, drug peddlers and habitual criminals-on-the-loose.

However, within a week of the launching, two albino atrocities were reported in northwestern Tanzania — suggesting that tackling the malady through the ballot box is no remedy.

There, indeed, isn’t much difference between this type of justice administration and the mob justice routinely meted out to street muggers and pickpockets!

Justice wrapped in a ballot paper has no basis in law — especially in a country which doesn’t recognise black magic as a reality. Besides, the exercise is draining public funds that would have been better used in enhancing albino welfare.

But has Tanzania come to a point where it is compelled to dispense justice through arbitrary balloting, convicting perceived or trumped-up suspects on a balance of (whimsical individual) probability?

If yes, then it says much about what’s wrong with the country’s regular law enforcement organs in particular, and the justice system in general.

Reportedly, hundreds of suspects of albino killings and maiming have been arrested. Some police and other local officials are also reported to have covered up for suspects, thereby going against the course and cause of justice.

Yet, no salutary action has been taken to deter this. The reason? Rampant, institutionalised corruption, of course.

Karl Lyimo is a freelance journalist based in Dar. Email: [email protected]