Two men jailed for attempting to bewitch and kill Zambia’s president
A court in Zambia sentenced two men to two years in prison for trying to use witchcraft to kill President Hakande Hichilema.
The Zambian Leonard Phiri and the Mazambican Jasten Mabulesse Candonde were sentenced under the Witchcraft Act after being arrested in December with charms in their possession, including a living chameleon.
“This is my point of view considered that the condemned were not only the enemy of the head of state, but also of the enemies of all the Zambians,” said the fine Mayambu magistrate in his decision.
The case was followed closely in Zambia, because it was the first time that anyone who was tried for trying to use witchcraft against a president.
The accusation alleged that Phiri and Candonde had been hired by a former fugitive deputy to abuse Hichilema.
Despite their insistence that they are traditional healers in good faith, the court deemed them guilty of two charges under the witchcraft law.
“The two owners accepted the charms. Phiri also demonstrated that the tail of the chameleon, once stung and used in the ritual, would lead to death within five days,” said the Mayambu magistrate.
The lawyer for the two men, Agrippa Malando, said that his customers had pleaded for the leniency because they were for the first time.
He urged the court to amend them, but the request was rejected.
The Mayambu magistrate noted that many people in Zambia, as in other African countries, believed in witchcraft, even if it was not scientifically proven.
The law has been designed to protect society from fear and damage caused by those who claim to have the power to carry out acts of witchcraft, he said.
“The question is not whether the accused are wizards or really have supernatural powers. It is if they have represented themselves as such, and the evidence clearly shows that they did it,” said the Mayambu magistrate.
In addition to the sentence of two years which was pronounced for them for “professor” of witchcraft, the men were sentenced to six months in prison for possession of charms.
As the convictions will run simultaneously, they will only serve two years in prison, from the date of their arrest in December 2024.
Hichilema previously said that he did not believe in witchcraft. He did not comment on the matter.
Lawyer Dickson Jere told BBC that the witchcraft law had been adopted during colonial domination in 1914.
He said that people were “very rarely” prosecuted for practicing witchcraft, but that helped protect elderly women who faced the courts of the crowd in the villages after being accused of having invaded someone and of having caused their death.
Witchcraft also appeared prominently in conversations on the prolonged dispute between the government and the family of the late president Edgar Lungu on his funeral.
Some people believe that the government’s insistence so that it is buried in Zambia, unlike the wishes of his family, could be for “occult reasons”.
The government denied the accusation.
Lungu died in South Africa in June, and his body is still in a morgue there due to the failure of the agreement on his burial.
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