A 79-year-old man of Kaundula area in Luano district has been brutally beaten by a mob on allegations of practicing witchcraft.
Central Province Police Commissioner, Chola Katanga, confirmed the development to ZANIS in an interview today.
Mr. Katanga said the incident happened on December 18 this year around 23:00 hours.
He said the victim, identified as Dennis Matapu, was suspected of killing his 20-year-old grandson, Veston Mbuzi, using witchcraft.
He explained that the mob later buried the body of the deceased at the victim’s residence, whose house was also extensively damaged.
Mr. Katanga noted that police officers visited the scene and rushed Mr. Matapu to Masansa rural health centre in Luano district where he is currently admitted.
The Central Province Police Commissioner stated that no arrest has been made in the matter, but investigations are underway.
He told members of the public to desist from taking the law into their own hands as doing so is criminal.
This mob justice has to stop!! We should respect our elders and stop accusing them of witchcraft everytime someone dies.As live expectancy increases we are going to have more and more old people in Zambia and Lawmakers need to do something to protect them.
And as people age, some unfortunately start to lose memory and act somehow crazy and in our society this is all associated with witchcraft. PF and Edgar have zero policy to safe the well being of aged senior citizens
So Charity’s husband is now commissioner in Central? Yaa better it’s closer to Ndola.
You need to take this type of crime more seriously if this mob craziness is to come to an end. This behavior is carried out mainly by uneducated people who still believe in a flat earth. If you arrest people doing this to our senior citizens, send them to prison for a long time. Treating cases like this casually will only encourage this primitive practice to continue. And remember that all of us will one day get old, and may be victims of this type of crime. Get serious and arrest the perpetrators.
And they say Zambia is a Christian country ? I live next door to a 96 year old lady and she’s the most adorable human being I’ve ever come across. In my community, it’s very normal to see people of this age group and no one blames them for neighbourhood deaths. People are living longer and sometimes brain functions diminish but that doesn’t mean that one is evil. Zambians need to stop some of these primitive beliefs and focus on building a better place for all . Government should put safeguards in place to protect our vulnerable elders .
7Enlightened, you ve misplaced understanding of Zambia as a christian nation. It is your responsibility as an individual to preach good news to 1 then masses of Citizens about the declaration rather than negating it.
I very much however appreciate the next paragraph on the adorable old queen in your area.
So you want to see more of benefits of the declaration lets proclaim the God’s love everywhere.
This declaration is a open attack to the devils and is agents hence they can never sit iddle watching Zambia merrying. To the true peace found only in God, Zambians lets take good care of this acheivers-old pipo.
God bless you as you celebrate the festival season.
There is no smok without fire, does witchcraft exist or not. Witchcraft is there more in rural areas and those practicing it should be condemned to death
Witchcraft is there but it is just a SILLY superstition that exists in backward societies. How were our ancestors taken into Slavery while they had Witcraft? They were brutalised during the trip to America and once there underwent the cruelest treatment ever meted on humans in the history of the world. They were dehumanised and broken down. All along they were practicing witchcraft among themselves never on the whites. Secondly, how was King Leopold of Belgium with his guns able to terrorise the natives of Zaire with their Witchcraft? He killeed over 10 million of them!!! People feared for having powerful black magic! So you Thirdly, why couldn’t South Africans use Muti/ Juju to chase the White people who treated them for years as sub-species? You see Witchcraft is real, but it’s just a…
… a primitive belief that has no inherent power. Witchcraft is given power by the believers that are why White people were able to Colonise us. Guns are REAL, they have real power whether you believe in it or not. It is based on scientific proof. Witchcraft is a figment of scared people’s imaginations. No one has the witchcraft power claimed by themselves or others. It’s all in the mind when people cannot get answers. Europeans believed in the same nonsense until they advanced and were able to get answers to problems they blamed on witchcraft. So stop it. These old people aren’t killing anyone. Let us move from the middle centuries, it is the 21st century. So Mushal was able to torture KK with Witchcraft after Independence? Well, tell me why he could not use the same witchcraft to…
… scare off the whites? It’s time we started thinking through these fake Witchcraft fantasy stories.
I SUPPORT THESE PEOPLE 100%. WITCHCRAFT IS A MENACE TO SOCIETY.