YET another life has been lost in a senseless killing the police suspect was a ritual murder.
Twenty-year-old Kamohelo Mohata’s life was violently cut short when he was dismembered, with his body parts being thrown down a pit latrine.
His murder comes hardly seven months after another young boy, Moholobela Seetsa, was also killed under similar circumstances.
Tragically, Seetsa’s killers were never arrested despite bold promises by the police that they would get to the bottom of that heinous crime and arrest his killers.
With the killer prowling the streets the villagers of Koalabata are still living in fear.
This need not be so.
In fact, we believe the Koalabata community must be allowed to reclaim their village and ensure no one lives in fear.
We are happy that the police seem to have moved swiftly in apprehending suspects in last week’s case.
We also believe the police seem to have a strong case against the two suspects.
They must not bungle their investigations.
As we have stated in previous editorials we find it quite shocking that we still have some Basotho who believe in the outdated belief that human body parts can promote one’s economic prosperity.
The key in reversing such warped thinking lies in educating our communities about the futility of such reasoning.
We need a public education programme that teaches communities that crime does not pay.
Our communities need to be taught that nothing beats hard work. We must instill ethics of hard work from a tender age.
We also need a national debate about such practices and the reasons that feed such thinking.
We must also assess the role of traditional healers in these ritual murders.
Such a call is not an attack on our traditions.
We believe traditional medicine has its place in society.
But when miscreants hide behind traditional practices to perpetrate such evil we need to review whether these healers are serving any purpose in a modern society.
Apart from the education our courts and the whole justice delivery system must lay a marker in saying enough is enough to such barbaric practices.
Punitive jail sentences will go a long way in discouraging these practices.
Unless the courts and the police work hard in stopping these murders, we run the risk of seeing aggrieved communities resorting to the law of the jungle in sorting out “alleged” perpetrators.
Such a scenario would seriously destabilise communities.
When all has been said and done we believe the best way of dealing with these backward traditional practices would be by tackling poverty in our communities.
We believe poverty lies at the heart of these crimes.
How do we empower communities to break free from the chains of poverty?
Admittedly, there are no easy answers.
When the government tackles and defeats the monster of poverty, then this battle against the crime of ritual murders would be half-done.
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