South African Convicted of Murdering Four Children to Sell Ears to Witch Doctor

A judge in South Africa sentenced a man to four life sentences in prison on Tuesday for the murder of his nieces and nephews – whose ears, he confessed, he planned to sell at a high price to a witch doctor for use in potions.

Southern African countries have spent much of the last decade fighting violence fueled by witch doctor, or traditional herbalist, demands for body parts to use in their ceremonies and potions. In nations like Tanzania and Malawi, the body parts of albino people can fetch as much as $75,000 for a whole body, according to United Nations studies. Tanzania has thelargest albino population on the continent.

In South Africa, 32-year-old Ben Zimele Mbhele pleaded guilty to killing his two nieces and two nephews, aged between four and 12, last year after meeting a man who told him that the children’s ears would sell at a high price to a witch doctor that he knew. Mbhele reportedly told police initially that he had to kill the children because they “were haunting him and that it was a satanic act,” according to South Africa’s the Times. His story changed when the court found that Mbhele took out a life insurance policy on the four children shortly before they were found dead, and collected 60,000 South African rand (about $5,000) total on the four children.

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