Police must be swift on all child abductions

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Written by Ikebesi Omoding Friday, 30 July 2010 08:33

The television images of four year-old King Lubowa's re-unification with his parents before the Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura, were touching. Lubowa had been kidnapped by his nanny for ransom.

One wished the happy scene could have been replicated to the parents of the murdered one year-old Ken Kakama; and to all the parents of all the other kidnapped and murdered children - and those who have been needlessly incinerated by mysterious fires.

These child kidnappings have all happened in the name of child sacrifice. In 2008, this column posed that sacrificing young children for their body parts was no longer news; it noted instances right from the 1990s up to the present. And whereas it was not so prevalent then, these days it has reached frightening proportions.

In the Nakawa High Court in 2002, a Kyaggwe man murdered his wife and hacked off her pubic parts and tongue; he wanted the parts for witchcraft. I wrote: "Witchcraft! It is an age old hankering for divining the future, presumably for longevity and prosperity.

It has been made to be an answer for prophesy; the need to know the events of the future in advance. Where the future events in a person's life denote unfavourable happenings, witchcraft sacrifices, especially the spilling of blood, preferably human blood, is meant to turn the circumstance round to be favourable." In Uganda, nothing so far has changed about this.

In 2007 The Sunrise ran a story: "Teso Vows to Fight Witchdoctors", in which a four-year old boy had been sacrificed for its parts. Going by this, the rescue of King Lubowa is merely the joyful side of an otherwise unfavourable coin that the Police have displayed for a long time.

It is tempting to ask: why has Kayihura (Pictured) acted fast in this instance? What is so unique in the Lubowa boy kidnapping that the Police could not have done similarly in the other cases? Could it not have been done for the case of the boy in 2007, or the Kakama case, or that of Kato Kajubi?

We are now used to diversionary and false explanations from those concerned. The requests for the ransom money appear to be a new development in the recent kidnappings. This can now be used to disguise the fact that the issue is about child sacrifice - the spilling of blood - and further mask the prevalent addiction to witchcraft. The Kajubi case had no apparent ransom attached to it. Indeed in all the court appearances no issue of money was mentioned as attached to hacking of the 12 year-old boy. But now money may be useful as a spoiler to disguise the witchcraft.

In Africa this has now devolved into the realm of politics, specifically the holding and retention of office. Whenever crucial elections are in sight the acts of human sacrifice become very common. The holding of power through juju and voodoo rituals has now come to be practiced as necessary, and seen as an inevitable attribute of power; it can be traced to cultural and traditional lifestyles.

This is what George William Alenyo attempted to deal with in his book about the conduct of the Bachwezi and Babiito dynasties; where one sacrificed children, as against the other sacrificing goats.

So the murky kidnappings and sacrifices will probably continue unless the Police come up with a tight form of practice for all concerned: for the parents to be "sure" of their children's minders; and for the Police to be on the "uptake" to immediately trace the culprits. If community policing put its act together and got the public to be properly "sensitized" on keeping their children, it could be easy to avoid the kidnappings.

That may be easier said than done, but it is infinitely worse when you throw in the dilemma of megalomania. It may be the reason why the Police have been unable and unwilling to sort out all the cases of the children that have gone unexplained.

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