FACT OR FICTION?…‘Are the toes of Zimbabweans made of gold?’

Raymond Jaravaza, Showbiz Correspondent
TUCKED away on the outskirts of Bulawayo’s central business district, a dilapidated building stands at the corner of a crowded street. The building is still in use as evidenced by hordes of people walking in and out.

Its dilapidated state, walls that are in desperate need of a lick of paint, and its broken outside windows are not what has caught the interest of the Saturday Leisure crew.

We are interested in what happens in one of the rooms in the building.

If our intel — information supplied to us by a source — is correct, then we are definitely onto something. We had been tipped that room 11, on the first floor, holds the secret to a hot topic that has gripped the country for the past two weeks or so.

Someone in that room claims to buy toes, yes, HUMAN TOES, for thousands of United States dollars, on behalf of his boss in Harare.

The room is eerily quiet and several knocks on the door yield no response. A slight push on the door shows it is locked and there is no telling if it is locked from the inside or the occupants are not around.

A lady in the next-door office tells us that the room had been empty for a while, but was recently taken up by two guys. She has no idea what trade her new neighbours are into but says they are hardly in the office and only pop in once in a while.

A phone number supplied by our source goes unanswered and several messages sent to that phone are not responded to.

We are left to wonder if the “toes for sale” story is nothing short of modern-day folklore peddled by social media keyboard warriors. Be that as it may, Zimbabwe is now at the centre of crude jokes in the global village known as social media.

From Accra in Ghana, the Nigerian capital city of Lagos to our southern neighbours South Africa, Team Zimbabwe is taking a battering on the social media streets. Our social fibre as a people and a country is being torn apart and questioned by fellow Africans. Are we that susceptible to the trappings of the finer things in life that the lure of money is so great we are willing to part with body parts?

“Are the toes of Zimbabweans made of gold?” asked one Twitter user from Nigeria.

The banter is not limited to social media users outside the country.

Last week, toe memes and jokes were a hit in Zimbabwe, often posted with the hashtag #Amazwane, which means “toes” in IsiNdebele, bringing light relief to an otherwise sad story that exhibits just how gullible some people can be to the vices of the internet.

BBC, the British public broadcaster, noted how the apparent social media ruse in Zimbabwe about people selling their toes for large amounts of money is being taken more seriously elsewhere in Africa. Suggesting that Zimbabweans are parting with their digits to beat poverty is laughable, noted the broadcaster.

The BBC says while it is not uncommon for body parts to be used in unscrupulous traditional so-called cures, often associated with witchcraft, the toes for sale ruse is nothing but a big scam. The BBC Disinformation Unit reviewed two videos said to be of people who had sold their toes or were in the process of selling their toes and believe they were staged.

But these social media trends sometimes have real-world implications as they can be believed and replicated.

Traditional healer Gogo Mahlangu of Njube suburb said rituals that involve the sale of body parts for self-enrichment are common in Southern Africa, but such cases should be labelled exactly for what they are — witchcraft.

“People are killed and their body parts harvested at the instruction of dishonest traditional healers who promise their clients untold riches, but I’ve never heard of anyone buying toes for those ridiculous amounts of money.

“My take is that if people are cutting off their toes, it’s a sign that they have joined some dark world rituals that will give them money in the long run. It’s all witchcraft if it’s happening at all,” said Gogo Mahlangu.

The police are not buying the story either. Bulawayo police spokesman Inspector Abednico Ncube said their own investigations proved that no such thing was taking place in the city.

“Trading in human body parts is a serious crime under the laws of this country and the police would like to assure the public that it’s not true that anyone is buying toes or body parts in the city,” said Ncube.

A church leader with a local Apostolic sect is of the opinion that parting with one’s body part, voluntarily or otherwise, is akin to selling their soul to the devil.

“We’re taught in the Bible that the human body is the temple of God. The verse says: ‘Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?’

“It is for that reason that it’s unthinkable that someone would be willing to sell their body parts for money. I sincerely hope it’s not true that people in Bulawayo are selling their toes for riches,” said the church leader.

The Government has come out strongly against peddlers of the “toes for sale” saga. The warning comes after a Harare dealer claimed in a newspaper that he was an agent of the body parts for sale scheme.

Deputy Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Kindness Paradza, said investigations proved the claims were nothing but a hoax.

“As Government, we made some investigations into this issue and we assessed the status of the matter. There is nothing like that, it’s the act of social media peddlers who are trying to tarnish our country.

“They are also tarnishing the image of our citizens, who are working hard to earn a living, assuming that they are trading their toes to prosper,” said Paradza. – @RaymondJaravaza

Article Source: The Chronicle