Victim of crime turns to inyangas

After break-ins into her house and night attacks, Ms Johana Ngoveni decided to turn toinyangas for help.

This after the police had failed to investigate the cases and find the short, broad-shouldered suspect who terrorises her.

“I am from the bushes now as you see me, to burn a T-shirt that I was wearing the night a thief attacked me in my house in 2014,” she told Limpopo Mirror. “My inyanga gave me somemuti and told me to burn it with the T-shirt, so that the attacker might suffer brutal consequences.”

It all started one night in 2010, when her hut and rondavel were set alight in Olifantshoek village, near Tiyani. She lost furniture and other goods to an estimated value of R75 000.

“Even though I reported the matter to the police, they did nothing,” she said.

On 22 June 2014, at midnight, the same short man broke into her house through a window that he had smashed. “I shone my cell phone's torch on him and asked him what he wanted,” she said. The man allegedly stabbed her three times in the elbow and arm.

“He demanded to kiss me, not even caring that I was bleeding profusely in the arm,” she said. “But I pulled at his private parts and bit his lips. He managed to bolt out of the house.”

She phoned the police, who came and opened a case. She noticed that three window panes of her house had been shattered.

“I inquired from the local clinic if any man had come for help with bitten lips,” she said. “But they said no.”

All the windows of her house were smashed in September 2014 in yet another incident.

“I heard someone smashing them as I slept inside the house,” she said. “I told that person to continue to smash the windows and get inside to do whatever he wanted to do to me. But he ran away.”

However, in the most recent incident, one window was smashed in the night while she was away in Gauteng and some goods were stolen from her house.

“My speaker, CDs, clothes, and tools are missing,” she wept. “I reported the incident to the police, but they are dragging their feet.”

Johana said she was tired of burglaries into her house and endless attacks on her.

“I have turned to inyangas now, but it's not helping either. I have already spent R7000 trying to get inyangas to cast spells on the people who break into my house and steal from me,” she sobbed, but her spouse, Mr Samson Baloyi, comforted her.

Baloyi told her to be strong.

“Don't tell me to be strong,” she lamented. “Even the inyangas are just eating my money for nothing. Nothing bad is happening to the people who steal my things!”

She said she wanted the police at Magoro in Tiyani to help her.

The provincial spokesperson for the police, Capt Mamphaswa Seabi, advised Ngoveni to ask to see the station commander at Hlanganani police station. “The station commander will then see how best to help her,” Seabi said. “This is really a sad case to hear that a victim of crime has turned to seek help from inyangas. The police are there to help her.”

Date:06 July 2015

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

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