What happened
In Nguni belief, the tokoloshe is a dwarf-like, malicious water spirit that an evil sorcerer can send against an enemy. It can make itself invisible and brings sickness and even death; that is why in many South African homes beds are still raised on bricks. In August 1953 people began to be killed in the valleys of the Umkomaas and Umzimkulu rivers in Natal – mostly poor rural people, among them children. The killer was Elifasi Msomi, a failed sangoma healer, who said that while consulting another sangoma he had been taken over by a tokoloshe, and that the spirit ordered him to kill. He twice escaped from custody and credited the spirit's power, which caused real fear in the area. Finally arrested for petty theft, he was identified and charged with 15 murders. In court he insisted he had been merely the tokoloshe's tool. He was sentenced to death. At the community's request, the judge allowed a delegation of nine Zulu chiefs and elders to witness the hanging in Pretoria on 10 February 1956 – to see for themselves whether the spirit would rescue him.
Witnesses
Court records and the press in 1955–1956, including “Time” (“Tikoloshe's Friend,” February 1956); the psychologists who testified at the trial; the delegation of Zulu chiefs present at the execution.
Explanations and hypotheses
The court held Msomi fully responsible. Two psychologists testified that he was of above-average intelligence and took pleasure in killing – in their view the tokoloshe story was an attempt to shift the blame. Belief in the tokoloshe is very much alive in South Africa, however, and Msomi's escapes had strengthened it, which is why the chiefs' presence at the execution mattered so much to the community. Even so, one of them reportedly said Msomi might return after death as a tokoloshe himself. Anthropologists note that the tokoloshe was once used to explain sudden deaths in sleep in huts heated by open fires, when people sleeping on the floor were poisoned by carbon monoxide – hence the custom of raising beds.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
Sources
- Time – Foreign News: Tikoloshe's Friend (1956)
- Michael Newton, The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (Checkmark Books, 2006)
- Lesley Fordred-Green, Tokoloshe Tales: Reflections on the Cultural Politics of Journalism in South Africa (Current Anthropology, 2000)
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