Why black Africans are considered savages.

'Body parts for sale in Jo'burg city centre'

May 08 2002 at 12:01AM

By Themba wa Sepotokele


Human body parts may be for sale on the streets in Johannesburg's city centre, according to a hard-hitting documentary.

The award-winning SABC3 programme Special Assignment on Tuesday night flighted a gruesome and chilling insert about corrupt inyangas who claimed to be selling human organs in Johannesburg, as well as a Medunsa staff member who allegedly sold investigators two human hands for R4 000.

A two-month investigation exposed networks trafficking in human limbs, extremities and organs - in contravention of the Human Tissues Act - and selling their grisly wares to people desperate for cures for illness and financial good luck.

A bogus and corrupt inyanga operating from under a bridge in Eloff Street Extension was exposed selling what were believed to be human organs. The inyanga had earlier sold the team human bones for R40 and promised to get them human flesh in a couple of days.

Bones were taken for forensic testing
The bones were taken for forensic testing and it was found they were those of a cow.

The man later introduced Special Assignment to a middleman at the Faraday taxi rank, who showed and agreed to sell to the team a human eye and brain for R1 800.

Special Assignment confronted the man, and it was not established whether the brain and eye were human.

Also exposed was Levi Masebe, who works at a mortuary at Medunsa in North West province, after he sold journalists two human right hands for R4 000. Masebe was filmed by a spy camera displaying the hands to the "buyers" and accepting and counting money.

Medunsa authorities, upon hearing of the alleged deal, immediately had Masebe arrested.

The team also probed the disappearance of a four-year-old girl in Malala, Venda, who vanished in 2000. Residents found a skeleton thought to be hers - but without feet or hands - and the bones were sent for tests.

Two years later it was found that the bones were indeed hers, but the tests could not reveal how she died.

The programme also exposed the death of a baby girl by her father, a self-appointed healer, who killed her in front of her mother, who said: "He took us to a secluded spot... where he beheaded her and chopped (off) her limbs and removed her intestines and then wrapped them in a plastic bag. He poured her blood into a calabash and carried them all home."