The rapid development of science, the Internet and social networks are changing the world around. That’s just the person himself, by and large, does not change. The presence of orbital space stations and the use of nanotechnology have not led to the disappearance of superstitions.
«Order» on the head
Even in the developed countries of the world, magicians and fortune-tellers do not sit without work – they have a lot of wealthy clients who believe in corruption, the evil eye and the devil in a stupa. And what can we say about some African countries, where education is not available to everyone.
It’s extremely dangerous to be bald there now. It’s not about the greater threat of sunstroke or the lack of attractiveness in the eyes of women. Bald people can be killed out of a passionate desire to enrich themselves.
According to the publication The South African, the Mozambique police are investigating the murder of a local resident, who was dealt with by unknown persons. The killers beheaded their victim, after which they were going to sell her to a buyer from Mali. The customer, however, for some reason did not show up for the transaction. Fearing to be captured, the killers threw the head in a park in one of the cities of Mozambique.
Five-year nightmare
For local police officers, this crime has become another in a long line of similar ones. Only in the Milange district of the province of Zambezia, five similar massacres have been recorded recently. In each case, the victims were bald men who had their heads chopped off.
For the first time, the law enforcement agencies of Mozambique faced this problem about five years ago. Then, in the same Milange district, two bald men were brutally murdered, one of whom, in addition to the head, had his insides removed.
The police managed to solve the crime. The killers were two 20-year-old guys who had no sadistic tendencies. The criminals confessed that they just wanted to make money by selling the bald man’s head and organs to local healers. As it turned out, they use them for rituals that bring good luck.
The problem, however, began to snowball not only because of the healers.
«They think that bald people are rich»
Police representative Inacio Dina He told The Guardian: “Locals believe that bald people are rich.” Moreover, some believe that wealth is located directly inside the bald. Rumors circulating in Africa say that bald people have gold in their heads. The most desperate simply attack people without hair on their heads in order to dig into the contents of their skull. And although no one, of course, managed to find a single gram of precious metal, the murders continue.
The police suspect that it was the sorcerers who became the root cause of the savagery, and it was they who launched the rumor about gold. Rituals using human heads make a much stronger impression on customers than more humane ones.
The problem is not limited to bald. In Africa, there is a whole “black market” for the sale of human body parts. There are buyers for the terrible product in South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda and other countries of the continent.
Albinos in Africa: living under the fear of a painful death
Bald people are best understood by Albino Africans. Not everyone knows, but in nature, the deviation associated with the absence of melanin pigment in the body is also characteristic of humans. Therefore, among blacks, sometimes light people with white hair are born. It’s not about mixing races, but about white blacks. The fate of these people is unenviable — scientific explanations in Africa are listened to by a few, and the rest are guided by sorcerers. The latter claim that albinos bring misfortune, but if parts of their bodies are used in magical rituals, it can heal serious ailments and bring well-being.
The authorities of various African countries record dozens of cases of attacks on albinos. Moreover, both young children and elderly people become victims. Those who fell into the hands of “albino hunters”, it is almost impossible to get out alive. In Malawi, the situation has reached the point that the police received an order to open fire on attackers trying to capture an albino. If the case continues to develop in this way, then similar protection measures will be required for bald Africans.
South Africa created self-defense units to protect penises
However, men with lush hair should not relax in Africa either. Some time ago in South Africa, in the province of Limpopo, self-defense units were created to protect… penises. The fact is that a wave of murders swept through the region for the sake of seizing the victim’s manhood. African sorcerers began to actively use male genitals in various rituals and began to pay those who supplied them with this “product”. Given the low standard of living on the Black continent, there were immediately a lot of people willing to commit a crime for the sake of earning money.
It came to unimaginable wildness. For example, a 9-year-old child was attacked right on the street. He miraculously survived, and the caught criminal confessed — was going to sell genitals to sorcerers. When the number of such crimes approached 300, local residents decided to unite in detachments, declaring a curfew in their settlements. Any appearance of an outsider was considered as a reason for alarm and preventive actions.
Ritual murder for the sake of winning elections
In 2008, a loud scandal in Gabon. This African state has oil reserves, but the presence of “black gold” does not rid even the elite of superstitions. The police found out that local politicians rely on sorcerers before the elections, and those, in an effort to ensure the success of clients, practice “ritual murders of children. Moreover, social activists who created an association to combatritual murders, it was stated, every time during the election campaign in Gabon, children begin to disappear. The bodies of some are not found at all, the bodies of others are found in a disfigured state. At the same time, the authorities were in no hurry to take measures to combat this savagery. And how could they be accepted, if among the representatives of the authorities there are plenty of those who themselves order “rituals for success”.
Here it is necessary to clearly understand — it is not some kind of natural wildness, but a lack of education that contributes to the preservation of the influence of sorcerers. And colossal poverty pushes people to commit atrocities that make their blood run cold. And the saddest thing is that a radical change in the situation is not expected in the near future.