"Child sacrifice" in modern-day Africa

Excerpts from a report at the BBC:

The villages and farming communities that surround Uganda's capital, Kampala, are gripped by fear. Schoolchildren are closely watched by teachers and parents as they make their way home from school... The mutilated bodies of children have been discovered at roadsides, the victims of an apparently growing belief in the power of human sacrifice...

Many believe that members of the country's new elite are paying witch doctors vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth.

"Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of money. They want to get richer," the pastor says. "They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business."..

[UK-based charity, Jubilee Campaign] says in a report that the true number of cases is in the hundreds, and claims more than 900 cases have yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources...

(I'll put the rest of the post below the fold for the benefit of the squeamish)

For our own inquiries, we posed as local businessmen and asked around for a witch doctor that could bring prosperity to our local construction company...

The witch doctor explained that this meeting was to discuss the most powerful spell - the sacrifice of a child. "There are two ways of doing this," he said. "We can bury the child alive on your construction site, or we cut them in different places and put their blood in a bottle of spiritual medicine."

Awali grabbed his throat. "If it's a male, the whole head is cut off and his genitals. We will dig a hole at your construction site, and also bury the feet and the hands and put them all together in the hole."


Awali boasted he had sacrificed children many times before and knew what he was doing. After this meeting, we withdrew from the negotiations.

We handed our notes to the police. Awali is still a free man...

Further details and some graphic images at the BBC.