Mayor on witchcraft charge
A SENIOR member of Zimbabwe’s ruling party has been accused of murdering a 12 year old girl to use her organs in tribal rites he believed would increase his business fortune.
Faber Chidarike, 53, mayor of Chinhoyi, 70 miles northwest of Harare, is also linked to several other violent crimes under investigation by police.
The politician was charged with the murder of Esnath Rangles in 1987 and dismembering her genitals for tribal rituals.
A court in Chinhoyi yesterday ordered Chidarike held in prison until a second hearing next month.
State Prosecutor Washington Munyoro said Chidarike, the owner of a chain of provincial stores and bakeries, was likely to use his influence to stifle evidence if he was freed on bail.
Police believed several other people, mostly women, who were reported missing in the Chinhoyi farming district in recent years, may have been killed on Chidarike’s orders, also for rituals.
Munyoro said police were investigating an incident in 1994 when a man’s body, with its head cut off, was found in Chidarike’s car.
He had claimed the head was severed in a highway accident, but pathologists would testify it was cleanly cut, as though with a knife.
Chidarike would also be charged with malicious damage after he allegedly used petrol to torch the car of a rival in the 1995 elections.
He became mayor of the town for the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front party in those elections.
For more than a decade, allegations of violence and intimidation have been aimed at the politician but this was the first time he was charged. Murder carries the death penalty in Zimbabwe.
Tribal rituals using animals are common in Zimbabwe to enhance wealth and invoke the powers of spirits in business and politics.
Human organs, however, are believed to be more potent, creating a grim black market in human body parts.
© The Examiner, 1999