By Horace Nyaka, Malawian Journalist
Some years ago the Daily Times had asked me to write an Oped on the albino murders. I did some research and discovered that some killers were just exited with a potential market. They killed hoping to get a market.
Same way our fathers hunted for a 50t with a woman carrying a child at the back or a 2tick with two swords. For a start you could comb the world and not find these old notes and coins and if you did you ended up with no one to buy because they were basically useless.
A few years ago a businessman in Machinga got a phone call from strangers offering to sell albino body parts. He told them to bring them over. He went to the police and alerted them. When the sellers came the police were there.
When pressed why they called the person they said they had heard that business people buy albino body parts so they killed the person and hoped the businessman would buy from them. A life had been lost just because of an assumption created.
Last few days I have seen strips of jokes on people in Zimbabwe selling toes for high end vehicles and thousands of dollars. While this is just for fun for most of those posting, it shouldn’t surprise us if some people start cutting toes of innocent people hoping to sell them.
The penchant for easy or fast money among black people and Malawians in particular is too big. When it comes to money very few of us are rational. We don’t even think. It’s later that we realize that we just wasted our time.
That’s why we can risk our good jobs or auction our country for a box of fake Jameson or just $1000. Some jokes can lead to disaster.
