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By Elizabeth Lobulu -ELCT
The Bishop
of the Evangelical Lutheran in Tanzania (ELCT) South East of Lake Victoria
Diocese (SELVD), Emmanuel Makalla, has pleaded for the protection of elderly
women and people with albinism killed by ruthless people who believe in
witchcraft.
He said
in order to check the rampant killings of old women and albinos in the
lake zone of Tanzania, “the community can only be liberated through
preaching of the Gospel. We need to increase the effort of preaching the
Gospel in the communities where the killings take place instead of putting
emphasis on using the police to make arrests and taking alleged culprits
to court only.”
He said
some members of the community still believe in outdated beliefs of witchcraft
to such an extent that “they fear naming alleged culprits. Even some
of the police sent to make the arrests are afraid to visit the communities
having heard scary stories from other colleagues.”
Presenting
a paper at a consultation attend by Bishops from ELCT and Bishops from
Germany (VELKD) in February this year, Bishop Makalla said emphasis on
preaching the Gospel in the Lake Zone will bring about the liberation
that will enable people to live in dignity.
He said
for the time being there are no enough measures in place to curb the wave
of killings of old women and people with albinism in the lake zone. “They
live like refugees in their own country as they are hunted down like wild
animals due to superstitious beliefs.” He said “wild animals
were better off because if an elephant is slaughtered commissions are
formed up to the international level in order to probe the incident and
curb future attempts.”
He appealed
for similar commissions to probe and protect lives of elderly women and
people with albinism and to make sure orphans do not go hungry at orphanages.
He cited
an example of Buhangija Orphanage run by the Catholic Church located close
to the ELCT-SELV Diocese Head Office in Shinyanga that started as an orphanage
for a few children but now it is hosting albino children. As a result
it operates beyond its capacity and sometime it fails to feed and provide
essential services adequately. By February 2014 the orphanage had accepted
260 children with albinism, the ELCT Bishop explained.
Although
the centre is run by Roman Catholic nuns, from time to time the ELCT Diocese
provides food aid and it is planning to help with the rehabilitation of
its infrastructure; namely the drainage, lavatory facilities and recreation
area so that the orphans can live in dignity.
On spreading
the Gospel in the communities, he said, in 2008 he took part in a mission
outreach campaign in Bariadi villages involving 200 evangelists and many
people converted to Christianity; and in all the areas they managed to
reach; incidents of murder of elderly women was significantly reduced.
Also
a one-week campaign in Sanungu village in Shinyanga in 2010 resulted in
1,113 people being baptized and the village saw an end to the killings
of elderly women, he said. In another mission outreach campaign carried
out in 2012, in Idukilo village, at least 1,020 people were baptized after
receiving the ‘Word of God’.
Bishop
Makalla said 127 years since the Gospel “seed was planted in Tanzania
by German Missionaries; we still have mission areas in the country.”
The Berlin
III Missionary Society, also known as the Evangelical Missionary Society
for East Africa (EMS) was among the three Lutheran mission societies from
Germany that introduced the Lutheran Church in then Tanganyika (later
Tanzania) when it opened its first missionary station at Kigamboni, Dar
es Salaam in 1887.
Participants
of the consultation were in support of the notion that ‘every person
is created in the image of God’ and that there was need to advocate
for the rights of those who are marginalized like the albino and elderly
women who are killed for having red eyes.
People
with albinism are killed as a result of widespread belief that those in
possession of their body parts will get rich.
Elderly
women are killed because of archaic belief that their red eyes ‘confirm’
that they are witches. But the bishop explains that elderly women have
red eyes because they had been living in dwellings without windows all
their lives while using cow dung for fuel due to shortage of firewood
in the area.
The South
East of Lake Victoria Diocese is among two dioceses of ELCT inaugurated
in 2013.
The word
“albinism” refers to a group of inherited conditions. People
with albinism have little or no pigment in their eyes, skin, or hair.
They have inherited altered genes that do not make the usual amounts of
a pigment called melanin.
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