Ritual Blood

Africa was enjoying a rash of ritual murder. Three years ago jet-complexioned Sir Ofori Atta, Paramount Chief of Akim Abuakwa, died (of natural causes) in the Gold Coast Colony. Soon his friend and secretary, Mensah, Chief of Apedwa, disappeared from view. After long investigation by the British authorities, eight natives were convicted of murdering Mensah, and sentenced to hang (TIME, Dec.11,1944). Mensah, the Crown contended, had been sacrificed to provide blood to daub a ceremonial stool which represented the late Sir Ofori; or to provide Sir Ofori with a companion in the spirit world; or both.

Two of the condemned were spared on account of youth. The other six, having ample resources, appealed again & again. Four times they narrowly missed the gibbet. Last month they lost another, apparently final appeal to London's Privy Council.

Nevertheless their lawyer fought on, and managed to invite a dispute between a group of sympathetic M.P.s and the Colonial Office. One of the M.P.s quoted scholarly books to the effect that human blood had not been ceremonially used in the Gold Coast for a century, and pointed out that some of the accused were Christians who would not have been tolerated at a pious pagan ceremony. The Colonial Office icily retorted that human blood was still preferred and that nominal Christianity means nothing to African ritual phlebotomists.

Last week the Colonial Office's arguments were inferentially bolstered when a black Basuto named John Makume, convicted of ritual murder, was hanged at Maseru, Basutoland, 3,000 miles from the scene of the Gold Coast mystery. John Makume was a Sunday bell-ringer in the local church, and his little gang of 16 men were "all educated and professed Christians." John, 75, had dispatched to the spirit world a 60-year-old shoemaker, had made "medicine" from the head, heart, lungs. In Basutoland such a medicine is believed to increase a chief's prowess in battle, boudoir, and law courts. Clearly, it had not worked for John.

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