Cauldron boils in witchy word war

[icymist]

The cauldron is bubbling and the spell-books are being frantically thumbed after the national coordinator of the Traditional Healers' Organisation, Phepsile Maseko, blamed muti murders on "heartless witches".

"Your public allegation against witches is demonstrably false, defamatory and objectionable to real witches, who are not guilty of that which you have, on several occasions, publicly accused us of," said an angry Damon Leff, director of the South African Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapra), in a letter to Maseko.

Revealing that of a total of 901 cases of corpse mutilation in South Africa last year, Limpopo accounted for 350 and Mpumalanga for 210, Maseko had asked: "How could a healer use body parts or remove somebody's body parts while the person is still alive? That means you are a witch, not a healer."

Leff argued that the accusations reinforced, without evidence, "prejudicial stereotypes that serve to encourage further witch-hunts". He said: "Your false and vexatious allegations against witches … may be regarded, to the extent to which such allegations may harm the reputations of real witches, as defamatory."
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