IT was at the crack of dawn when the screaming villagers drew the attention of an elderly man to a homestead, a few metres away from his.
Mackenzie, as he described himself in a video that has since gone viral, said he was just getting ready to go about his chores, when the unusual ruckus caught his attention.
Mackenzie, said he mastered courage and was surprised to see a naked man, suspected to have been ensnared at the homestead by a local prophet and traditional healer.
In the video, he said he was not able to dispel the disbelief gnawing away at his mind like a worm from what he had seen.
“I saw this man, bearing a familiar face but it was somewhat dazed,” said Mackenzie who hails from Bantu Village in Nyamandlovu, Matabeleland North province.
Narrating the incident, he said the chap only identified as Mpofu, was reprimanded by his grandmother who was whipping him “into line” using itshoba – a traditional healer’s whisk.
This he said, stirred accusations of witchcraft among villagers, who also accused his grandmother of dabbling in the dark arts.
This is but a norm in the area, where accusations of witchcraft and wizardry abound, said one villager, referring to the incident which occurred on the morning of February 13 this year.
While other villagers believe the man could have been experiencing some form of euphoria from drugs or substances, others strongly believe he (Mpofu) was stomped in an act of witchcraft.
“He was found in the wee hours in our yard,” said MaMoyo, who resides at the Ngwenya homestead.
We were awoken to the sounds of dogs barking, but then heard a constant and strange movement much like that of the movement of a person.
I instructed one of the boys to investigate and he told me that there was a naked man. When we tried to reprimand him, he became violent and was hysterical,” said MaMoyo.
She said they alerted neighbours, who were also startled by the incident and tried to chase him out but he kept on refusing and questioning why he was being chased away from his destination.
“…We managed to convince him to leave our homestead.
And this is when he started saying he didn’t know how he had arrived at our home and we believe that this is witchcraft because he had no recollection of what was happening,” said MaMoyo.
She said after they got him to leave the yard, he went and sat under a tree where he dug for roots
“He was behaving in the most strange manner and was stark naked.
While he was digging he was chanting and spitting into the hole he dug and was wriggling like a possessed person. When his grandmother came, she started hitting him with a traditional whisk. He asked her how she would feel if he too hit her with his own whisk” said MaMoyo.
She said this was the first time they encountered such an incident.
“If this was alcohol then there would be clear signs but how does a person get drunk and walk for kilometres from his home to a homestead he is not accustomed to naked?
This is pure witchcraft and nothing else,” said MaMoyo.
However, the man behind casting a protection spell on the Ngwenya family homestead, Prophet Mayibongwe Tshabalala, said if Mpofu and his family do not apologise and acknowledge that they had been caught out they would soon perish.
“If they are not careful they will perish. The charms they use are dangerous and now that they have been caught out they need to dispose of that and apologise to the community and be taken to a traditional court.
People do not understand how dark, witchcraft is. People invoke the ancestral spirits or that of the devil to carry out their sinister motives,” said Tshabalala.
He said the Ngwenya family had been complaining about incidents of witchcraft and acquired his services.
“Witches are real and they are always caught. In this incident, when this man was chased he left but he and his family need to follow the proper rites to release him,” said Tshabalala.
