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The Traffic in Heads: Bodies, Borders and the Articulation of Regional HistoriesAuthor(s): Luise WhiteSource: Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, Special Issue for Terry Ranger(Jun., 1997), pp. 325-338Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2637625

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Journal of SouthernAfrican Studies, Volume 23, Number 2, June 1997 325

The Traffic in Heads: Bodies, Borders andthe Articulation of Regional Histories *LUISE WHITE

(SmithsonianInstitute)

This article is about stories of chiefs' and childrens' heads that circulate in and out ofsouthern Africa. It argues that rather than trivialising or exoticising African experiences,stories about heads that cross political and conceptual boundaries, and how long they staythere, and whose spirit is aggrieved - and where it is aggrieved - while the heads are gone,reveal the physicality with which colonial and postcolonial violence has been experiencedby Africans. Considered alongside stories of other travelling body parts such as SaartjeBartman's remains or organ transplants, stories of chiefs' and childrens' heads can link thehistory of cosmology with that of politics. Official demands for the return of some bodyparts, and unofficial acquiescence to the loss of other body parts, remind us of the variousways that the contradictions of colonial and postcolonial regimes have been experiencedand articulated. The variety of head stories cannot be forged into a neat historicalnarrative, however; they are in tension with each other, and thus depict the history of theregion that produced them.

IntroductionIn 1975, Terence Ranger defended his study of dance in East Africa by answeringMagubane's critique of Clyde Mitchell's study of the kalela dance in colonial NorthernRhodesia.l

Magubane bjects o the triviality f the topic ... Oneshouldstudy he realexperiences fAfricansn Zambia.. notephemeralndinsignificantroducts f it. Therealexperiencesa matter f colonialnvasion, f resistance,f accommodation,f protest nd herepressionfprotest.The defence quickly turned to offence, however: 'my own work in the past has stressedresistance, and compulsion, and protest, and in this book I hope to illuminate them fromsome unexpected angles ratherthan to abandon them altogether'.2The idea of a real and truehistory about which historiansare obliged to write and theidea that there are angles from which it is best adduced needs to be examined, however.Who decides what is the real and truehistory and on whose behalf is this decision made?

* Earlierversions of this paperwere given atDuke University anda conferenceon the Commerce n Organs,heldat the University of California,Berkeley,in April 1996. I am grateful o theparticipantsor theircomments andsuggestions.WilliamBeinart,BryanCallahan,MargotFinn, Rob Gordon, vanKarp,RandallPackard,and CarolSummers provided me with tri-continentalnewspaper clippings and William Beinart, Diana Jeater, TimScarnecchia,Ken Vickery and RichardWerbnerprovided me with detailedcomments.1 BernardMagubane, A CriticalLook at the IndicesUsed in the Studyof Social Change n CentralAfrica', CurrentAnthropology12, 4-5 (1971), pp. 419-431. Critiquesof Mitchell are alive and well, see Albert B. K. Matongo,'PopularCulture n a Colonial Society: AnotherLook at Mbeni and Kalela Dances on the Copperbelt,1930-64',in Samuel N. Chipungu ed), Guardians n their Time:Experiencesof Zambiansunder Colonial Rule (London,1992), pp. 180-217.2 T. 0. Ranger, Dance and Society in Eastern Africa (Berkeley, 1975), p. 4.

0305-7070/97/020325-14 ? 1997 Journalof SouthernAfrican Studies


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326 Journal of SouthernAfrican StudiesAre.the deeds of kings and politicians real history, or are the deeds of ordinarypeople? Ifhistorians study ordinary people, do they study the actions with which ordinary peopleimpact on kings and politicians,or do they studyhow ordinarypeople think, imagine, andconstruct heirvisions of the world?If historiansstudythepopular deas of ordinarypeople,do they then label some ideas importantand others trivial, some uplifting and othersgrotesque? The year after Dance and Society in Eastern- Africa was published, Rangerexpressed concern over the state of African history. The golden age of enthusiasmandoptimismin the projectof demonstrating he possibilities of Africanhistoryhad given wayto an age of lead. Althoughhe was quick to locate such a change in the life cycle of newfields in declining economies, he noted that many African scholars had come to see thechronicles of princes and political partiesas obscuringthe growing poverty and inequalityof the continent.Rangerused a phrasethat so quickly became a cliche that its fuller formrequirescitation:'Africanhistoryhas been importantn Africa for reasons of pridebecauseit could not possibly have been useful for anything else' .3 Strong words indeed. My concernhere is to rereadthem in the light of this essay, and concerns about the trivial and theephemeral. After all, in the late 1990s, when no serious scholar doubts the reality ofcolonial violence but few serious scholars address the history of postcolonial violence,questionsof historiographic ractices,and whose historyis recorded n whatterms,for whatends, are still of critical importance.This is a paper about body part sales and a regionaltraffic n children's headsrumouredto take place in contemporaryZimbabwe. Although most of these are Hararetownshipstories, thereis another, argerframe of postcolonial head stories circulating n and out ofthe 'new' South Africa, of which ANC statements that SaartjieBaartman's remains bereturned rom the Musee de l'homme in Paris and the search for the Xhosa chief Hinsta'shead in Scotland are the best known. This paper suggests that these stories of body parts,hearts,doctors,and bordercrossingsare not only a debate about the vulnerabilityof Africanbodies, but about the vulnerabilityof Africanborders,and about the languageof individualrights that protects bodies and underminesthe borders. It argues that the trivial and thegrotesque are importantbecause it is with tales of commonplace insults and uncommonbeheadingsthat people debate the terms and the categories in which change takes place.4The traffic n heads, like the other traffics to which the title of this essay refers,revealslittle aboutheads, but much more about the world in which such traffics take place. Thetrafficin heads is about economics and desire. It is about what people want and what theybelieve they must go throughto obtain it. It is about needs and opportunities,sales anddistribution.Nevertheless, this essay is open to charges that it exploits, trivialises andexoticizes Africans. Since stories aboutchildren'sdecapitationare neithertrivial nor exoticto the people who tell them, it is important o ask where these charges might come from.I suggest that they come from specific moments within African history that have nowpassed. Early nationalisthistoriographydid not problematise ts goals. As John Lonsdaleput it, the first moralpremisesof Africanfreedom seemed clear:political freedom and racialequality protected by 'renewed sovereignties' of independent states, protectedin turnbyscholars producinga history with which those states might legitimately govern.5But the

3 T. 0. Ranger, 'Towardsa Useable African Past', in ChristopherFyfe (ed), AfricanStudies Since 1945: Essaysin Honourof Basil Davidson's SixtiethBirthday (London, 1976), pp. 17-30. Emphasis n original.4 StephenWilliamFoster,The Past is AnotherCountry:Representation,HistoricalConsciousness,and Resistancein the Blue Ridge (Berkeley, 1988); andL. White, 'Tsetse Visions: Narrativesof Blood and Bugs in ColonialNorthernRhodesia, 1931-9', JournalAfricanHistory,36 (1995), pp. 219-245. Thishappens n academiccirclesas well, see MartinHall, 'Heads andTales', Representations,54 (1996), pp. 104-123.5 JohnLonsdale, 'StatesandSocial Processesin Africa: A Historiographical urvey',African StudiesReview, 24,2-3 (1981), p. 143.


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The Traffic n Heads 327triumphsof the postcolonial African state, such as they were, were not triumphsfor all.There were soon subtle and disparate academic challenges to the nationalist agenda.Starting n the late 1970s women's history, attention o peasantproductionand its triumphsand failures, and to peasant protest, and the study of African religion (all incited in varyingways by some compelling Marxist scholarship), all of which were joined to events inAfrica, tended to foul the categories in which nationalist historiography,precolonial andcolonial, was written. The subsequentretreat rom academic Marxismin many places, anda heightened sense of audience elsewhere, occasioned a rethinkingof the languageand thecategories with which the earlier critique of nationalisthistoriographywas sustained.6Oncescrutinized,the language of academic analysis and the language of repression were tooclose for comfort:the words were differentbut the meanings were the same.7The contestedand ambiguous responses to colonial and postcolonial violence required nterrogationwithtools that were also contested and ambiguous. In this context subjects once called exotichave become viable and important.But how are Africanists to write a history that takes into account the differentmeaningsattached to events and social change? And for whom should they write it? The idea thatthere is - or once was - a single, unified audience for whom African history should bewrittenhas not been allowed to die a naturaldeath.8On the one hand, African historiansdo worryabout whom they write for: scholarswant to respondto criticismsfromAfrica butknow their careers are made by colleagues who never set foot on the continent.On theother, they protest too much: neither Africans nor colleagues speak with one voice; inAfrica and everywhere else there are multiple audiences who take multiple meaningsfromour scholarship, each one bringing different experiences to our texts. But if there aremultiple audiences, how do we address Ranger's twenty year old challenge, that historianswrite useable pasts for all members of African societies, not just those who govern? Arewe not then left with the more recent challenge of J.B. Peires, thatAfricans alreadyhavea useable past to which academic historians add nothing but a mass of details?9I want to arguethat these two discrete use-values are not contradictory,nor shouldtheybe cast in the time-honoured rhetoric of the-history-Africa-needsor the-history-Africa-wants. WritingAfricanhistory may be less a matterof which imaginedaudience we writefor and more a matterof which vocabularieswe write in. Whenhistorians ook beyond theestablished valorization of events toward the meanings and the values with which thoseevents were invested at the time, they can interpret evidence in the categories andconstructions within which it was produced.This changes the position from which thehistoryis written; t offers new 'angles' on known pasts andways to access unknownones.Whathistoriansmightcall fantasticcan be partof a real and concrete ocal situation.10Whathistoriansomit in orderto make a past 'useful' might be what was thought by the actorsto be importantat the time. An African history that reportslocal idioms, local rumours,

6 Bogumil Jewsiewicki, 'African Historical Studies: Academic Knowledge as "Useable Past" and RadicalScholarship',African Studies Review, 32, 3 (1989), pp. 1-76; FrederickCooper, Decolonizationand AfricanSociety: the Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge,1996).7 This point does not come from AfricanHistory,but Indian.See RanajitGuha, 'The Proseof Counter-Insurgency',in RanjitGuha and GayatriChakrovarty pivak (eds), Selected SubalternStudies(Oxford, 1988), pp. 45-86; andShahid Amin, Event, MetaphorMemory: Chauri Chaura,1922-92 (Berkeley, 1995).8 JanVansina, Some Perceptionson the Writingof AfricanHistory',Itinerario,16, 1(1991), pp. 77-91. ButRangernotes thatmanyyoung Africanssaw the Africanhistorywritten or Africansas 'contributing xclusively to culturalnationalism';see Ranger, 'Useable Past', pp. 21-24.9 J. B. Peires, 'Suicide or Genocide?Xhosa Perceptionsof the NongqawuseCatastrophe',Radical HistoryReview,46-7 (1990), pp. 55-56.10 Ranger, 'Useable Past', p. 24.


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328 Journal of SouthernAfrican Studieslocal representations nd local misrepresentations einsertsthat history into the communitythat produced it.But can local idioms be understood n the same terms as those words and ideas that areunderstood n 'universal'canonsof evidence?Is the temporary treet wisdom of HarareandMasvingo to be interpretedn the same way as the formal words of elders or princes?Dothe same standardsof evidence apply to representationsand misrepresentations like? Iflocal idioms are specific to time and place, if they are culturalconstructions, historiansmight best be served to interpret hem both as situated and constructedknowledge. To dothis, I want to borrow a concept from Karin Barber'swork:thatof 'the unofficial'. Barberuses this category to depict the fugitive and fluid vitality of popularculturein Africa, butshe defines it, after Bakhtin, by its opposite: popularculture is not official culture.11What follows might be called the historyof the trivial and ephemeral,not because it isunimportant,but because this history is produced outside of official sanction. Officialsanction, as we shall see, would make it the real and true history that so many of ourcolleagues want studied;official sanctioncan make the grotesqueprosaic.12 The everydaycomments and gossipings in townships keep the grotesque grotesque.The stories I cite arenot produced by the inarticulateor the invisible. On the contrary, they are produced byreflective people who have so problematisedthe nationalist project that they tell storiesabout the physicality with which it has been carriedout. My point is not that some voicesare official and others are not, but that some narrativesare given official sanction whileothers,however similarthey might be, can be called trivialand ephemeral.Not only is therean unofficial, regionalhistory13 in body partsbut also, as we shall see, an official nationalhistory in body parts.14These stories do not conflict or compete in the sense that they arecontendingnarrativesor realities;I am not sure they overlap.But they are in tension witheach other, and the tension between these narrativesmay open up a space for a new kindof historiography,a new useable past.

The trafficin heads concerns stories about the murderof children4nd the transportation ftheir heads across the South African border. It is a recent story in postcolonial Zimbabwe.Most people say it began in 1991; a few people said it was dying out in mid-1995. It is notthe first time that people heard that Africanbody partswere removed, commoditized andsold. Muti is the generic term for drugs and medicine in central and southern Africa.Occasionally muti is made with human tissue, usually for people seeking success inbusiness.15 Muti itself is neutral whether it is used for good or evil depends on how it is

11 KarinBarber, 'PopularArts in Africa', African Studies Review, 30, 3 (1987), pp. 1-78, esp. pp. 9-12, 34-40.12 I am hardly he first o note the ways thatpostcolonialstates makeviolence ordinary: ee RichardWerbner,Tearsof the Dead: TheSocial Biographyof an African Family(Edinburgh,1991);Liisa H. Malkki, Purity and Exile:Violence,Memory,and National Cosmologyamong HutuRefugees n Tanzania Chicago, 1995). However othersdisagree. Achille Mbembein 'ProvisionalNotes on the Postcolony', Africa, 62, 1 (1992), pp. 3-37, argues thatnot only is postcolonial violence grotesque,but so is postcolonialgentleness.For a useful summaryof debatesaboutthepostcolonysee RichardWerbner, MultipleIdentities,PluralArenas',in RichardWerbnerand TerenceRanger (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London, 1996), pp. 1-25.13 Whatfollows is a regional rather han a local history:this is not a study of idioms, metaphorsor genres in theirlocal context and performance,but rather a regional history researched with assistants and written withoutknowledge of either Shona or Sindebele.In fact, I was beginning researchon another opic when my assistantsand I first heard these stories.14 The point here is thatthese historiesor stories arebeing told in, or through,or withheads (ratherhanthe historiesbeing about heads).15 PeterFry, Spirits of Protest: Spirit Mediumsand the Articulationof Consensus among the Zezeru of SouthernRhodesia (Zimbabwe) Cambridge,1976), pp. 23-25.


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TheTraffic n Heads 329prepared and opinions about it have more to do with opinions about the efficacy of mutithan about the efficacy of body partsfor such purposes. The world of muti is a world ofmedical phenomenology and causationas complex as that of the West, and has been welldocumented. How muti functions in the 1990s, and how it articulates with westernbiomedicine, is something that elderly residents of Harare ownships described udiciouslyin their concerns about the strengthsand side-effects of such practices.The power of humanmuti comes precisely from its being human tissue. The strengthof a heart, brain, and fingers can be used to impartanotherperson with power and goodfortune when used properly. But such uses have their drawbacks: n a world where spiritsact - a world in which, accordingto one healer, living humanssimply act on spirits'behalf- spirits take revenge against the loss of a kidney or heart. Thus, body parts had to beremoved from people specifically murdered or that purpose or the recently dead;properburialsreleased spirits from theircorporealbodies so that grave robbing produceda spirit'swrath and useless organs.16 Body parts could be removed, mixed, and given to anotherhuman being, but they never lost theirbodily integrity:they never ceased to belong to thepersoninto whom they were born,regardlessof whetherthat person was dead or alive. Onen'anga (healer) was taken aback by the organ donor form on the back of my Minnesotadriver's license. 'Why would someone want to survive using your organs?If someone didthis, took my organs,I would come back to haunthis family. If you want to live peacefully,you must not get involved in such things'.In theory, Shona cosmology provided a way to neutralisethe spirits whose body partswere so used: when a heart or brain was taken from a corpse, anotherkind of muti wouldbe thrown nto the grave to put the dead 'in a deep sleep' so they would not torment hosewho killed them or used their organs.17In practice, however, the risks of even consideringtaking someone else's organ were enormous: a woman whose teenage neighbourdied of'kidney failure' had 'heardthat the doctors asked one of his relatives to donate a kidney'.'I'm not sure what happened', she explained, 'but two deaths followed each other in thatfamily'.18 This was not a matter of the world of ancestors alone; it was the logic ofconceptionandbiological reproduction.Shonabodies are not as individualwith uniqueandself-containedsubstances so much as they are dividual;theirpersonhood s relational.Justas a child is conceived in the fluids of both parents, those fluids protect the child fromundue and dangerousfamiliaritieswith others after he or she is born. The removal of achild's or sister's or brother'sbody partwhether for muti or transplant xposes a family tothe untolddangerof new and unwantedfluids, just as the recipientof the body partwouldbe vulnerable to embodied and supernatural anctions from the dividual from whom thebody partwas taken.19Nevertheless, most people agreed that humanmuti was worth the risks for those who'loved money'. The use of body partsfor magic has been the subjectof sensationalwriting(and photographs) n colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe,20 ut most people interviewedwere matter of fact about it. While it was the 'bogus n'angas' or 'n'angas from Malawi'who encouraged he use of body partsfor wealth andprivilege, peoples' objectionsto mutioften had more to do with notions of disciplinethanwith notionsof bodily integrity.'Those16 Mr EdwardMashingaidze,7 July1995; Mrs Rudo Gondo,11July 1995. All interviewswere conductedby myself,Simba Handiseniand Joseph Seda.17 Mr EdwardMashingaidze.18 Mrs Alma Chibisa-Bira,16 July 1995.19 My thinkinghere has been influenced by RichardWerbner, CreativeDividualism:Reflectionson Mwana ndiMai', FacultyOpposition,University of Uppsala, 24 May 1996.20 Two examples should suffice: John Thompson, Crime Scientist, Men of Our Time, vol. 5 (Bulawayo, 1980)especially pp. 23-43, and 'N'anga Confesses Horror:Thirty ChildrenKilled for RitualPurposes', Parade, July1994, pp. 11, 47.


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330 Journal of SouthernAfricanStudieswho buy body partsmake trouble for themselves,' one man argued.'If you use muti to getmoney you aregamblingwith death. Make money by working hardonly'. This man listedthe names of the many businessmenhe had known 'who indulgedin muti to get money ...These people died before their time. You can only succeed in business by hardwork'.21 Buta few months later in Livingstone, Zambia, there were riots when shop assistants inAsian-ownedbusinesses found 'humanorgans' on the premises andchildren's corpses weredug up and found to be missing brains and hearts.22Medicine and muti did overlap, not in ideas about African bodies or what constitutedthem and how, but because hospitals - which many people thought was the primarycharacteristic f Westernmedicine- providedan important ource of body parts. Autopsiesandhospital morgueswere ideal places for unscrupulousprofessionalsto findbody partsforequally unethicaln'angas. Many people knew stories about such thefts. Although severalpeople thought morgue attendantsand orderlies took body parts from corpses, most helddoctors and nursesresponsiblefor this traffic: 'It standsto reason that doctors and nurseswork togetherin this thing. Morgue attendantscould not steal the partsbecause theirjobis simply to carry bodies to the mortuary'.23 Many believed that body parts were takenduring autopsy. One man's story is revealing, in part because of how body parts wereconcealed:

My grandchildcommittedsuicide, she hangedherself ... A post-mortemwas done ... Then,she was sewn back... I foundshe was looking lat, ike thisnewspaper....f theytook theheart,nobodyknows .. how will you be ableto see when t is sewnback?24As a woman noted, when hospitals 'give you the body for burialyou can't open it up tosee if all the parts are inside'.25 One man insisted:

There s no way youcan tell. Duringpost-mortemheheart, ungsand nnards re taken orobservation. fterpost-mortemhesepartsarenotputback.Whoevers given hem o destroycan sell them.26A healer reported he questions she had asked a morgue attendant o find out the state ofher dead son's body.27The matterof fact anguishthat townshipresidentsexpressedabout mortuarymuti wasneither stimulatednor exacerbatedby a mid-1995 scandalin which a morgue attendantatParirenyatwaHospital - the teaching hospital - was arrested or selling hearts to n'angas.Almost no one spoke of this unless asked. And indeed, why shouldshe be mentioned at all?After all:

Badpeoplehavealwayshad uses for deadpeople'.2821 Mr Luke Mupasa, 6 July 1995.22 'Riot Rocks Livingstone: Human Heart FindSparks Looting, Running Battles', Times of Zambia, 28, October1995, p. 1; 'Livingstone Riots Rage', Times of Zambia, 30 October 1995, p. 1; 'Victims Exhumed', Times ofZambia, 5 November 1995, p. 1. I am grateful to Bryan Callahan or these clippings.23 Mrs Jane Katsande, 18 July 1995; see also MrsGertrudeGovera, 16 July 1995.24 Mr SimonZichawo,4 July 1995. Africanswere not alone in imagining dreadfulhappeningsduringautopsy.In1960,Parirenyatwa,he firstAfricanphysicianandthe manfor whomthe teachinghospital s named,was carryingout an autopsywhen a whitemanburst n and tried to stophim saying: 'No black bastard s going to cut up mymother'. RichardWerbner,personal communication,5 August 1996.25 Mrs GertrudeGovera.26 Mr EdwardMashingaidze.27 Mrs Rowai Saka, 27 July 1995.28 Mrs GertrudeGovera. Indeed, Africans' use of body partsfor money andEuropeans'use of African body partsfor the rituals and benefits of imperial projects are and have been widespread n many partsof Africa, but areoutside the regional scope of this essay. See for example Rik Ceyssens, 'Mutumbula:Mythe de l'Opprime',Cultureset Development,7 (1975), pp. 483-536; KarinBarber, PopularReactionsto the Petro-Niara',Journalof ModernAfrican Studies, 20, 3 (1982), pp. 431-450; Lucy A. Jarosz, 'Agents of Power, Landscapesof Fear:the Vampires and Heart Thieves of Madagascar',Environment nd PlanningD: Societyand Space, 12 (1994),pp. 421-436; and Misty L. Bastian, '"My Head Was Too Strong!":Body PartsandMoney Magic in NigerianPopularDiscourse', unpublishedessay, 1995.


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The Traffic n Heads 331People have always stolen hearts for muti. People would disappearand be found laterwithouttheir hearts or index fingers. This was done for money.29

Muti and unscrupulous morgue attendants were facts of African life. The extent to whichthey were discussed or worried about were the extent to which muti itself was a topic fordiscussion. The role of Western medicine in facilitating the availability of muti wassecondary to anxieties about muti. But the role of Western medicine and hospitals inproviding muti was not secondary to anxieties about hospitals. The Parirenyatwa Hospitalscandal, like the newspaper and magazine articles about disappearing patients and missingcorpses, simply proved what everyone already knew: people were not safe in hospitals.30

IIThe same people who talked about muti also reported another trade in body parts - theinternational traffic in children's heads that crossed regional borders - without talk of thedead childrens' spirits or avenging ancestors. 'The story doing the rounds today concernspeople who are taking human heads to South Africa to exchange for kombis [mini-vans].All of this is done for the love of money'.31 Privately owned kombis licensed and operatedas commuter buses were extremely profitable in the early 1990s. While the sacrifice ofchildren for money is a common trope in postcolonial Africa to explain how people get rich,this story was credible even to people who doubted stories about mnuti.The same man whotold us that stories about body parts taken from hospitals were simply made up by'mischievous people who were out to discredit hospital authorities' had heard of a womanin Beitbridge 'who was asked to bring a dead infant in exchange for four kombis'.32A healer heard of someone arrested at the Mozambican border with a 'kombi full ofheads'.3 More detailed accounts revealed the commonalities between this traffic and muti,but, in the manner of the social life of things, different body parts had different socialtrajectories:

Nowadays, children and teenagersare found far away from home. They take the heads andsome innards.... Therearesome n'angas who buy the hearts to mix with medicine.The headsare used as bait to catch those big fish in the oceans. It is said that those big fish arevery fondof human flesh. Once caught, they are cut up to get at the precious stones that are inside.34One woman had heard a lot about the trade in heads to South Africa and the consequencesfor the head-takers:

It's one of those stories thatcirculate.I did not witness it but I heard some woman was foundwith a human head. Afterbeing found out she committed suicide with an overdose of Norolontablets. Those who deal in human heads do so to get kombis. These heads are used as bait tocatch those big fish, which they say have preciousstones in their bellies.Q. So this big fish eats the human head?A. No, the head is used as bait, andaftercatchingthe fish, they cut it open to get the preciousstones.

29 Mrs Chibisa-Bira.30 See forexample'HarareHospital:Grimy,Unsanitary ndCrowded',Parade, May 1991, p. 17; 'CorpseVanishes:hospital staff threatensgrieved mother',People's Voice, 11-17 September 1994, pp. 1,2, and 'Corpse PuzzleDeepens: "Where s my baby buried?" People's Voice, 2-8 October 1994, p. 1, 2,; 'Hospital Nurses HarassPatients', Parade, May 1995, p. 37; 'ParliamentProbes Records of "Death Doctors" , Horizon, June 1995,pp. 11-13. Author's fieldnotes, 14 and 21 July 1995.31 Mr Luke Mupasa.32 Mr and Mrs ArthurKwaramba,20 July 1995.33 Mrs Rowai Saka.34 Mrs Chibisa-Bira.Some people said the precious stones were pearls, others said gold.


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332 Journal of SouthernAfricanStudiesQ. How do you get the head across the border?A. If you want to cross the border o South Africa, your bags are searched.Some of these bagshave false bottoms, andthis is where the heads areput.The heads are wrapped n brownpaper.Some people put the heads in their baskets and baskets are not searchedat the border since theauthoritiesassumedtherewas food in the baskets. But nowadays, because of much talk aboutthe heads, they searcheverythingat the border.They also use snifferdogs ... By the time theheadreaches the border t will have a stench the dogs can smell, and the person with thatbagor basketis arrested .. If it were not for these dogs, people would be able to take these headsacross.Q. How did this business of the heads start?A. This startedrecently,around 91, when kombisbeganto come in largenumbers.Those whobrought the kombis would tell their friend how they acquiredthem and such friends wouldmake an effortto acquiretheir own. Those friends then confidedin other friends until the newscame out.Q. I thought that all the gold and gems in South Africa came from mines.A. It is not gold, the stones found in these big fish. It is differentfrom gold. If it were gold,that would be found locally.35

A man and his wife, both in their early sixties, had heard that the heads were sold to peoplewho used them as bait for 'big fish ... believed to have gold inside them'. When I askedif gold did not indeed come from mines underground, his wife answered:

The mines are owned by rich people, and they keep all the money raised from mining gold.The poor man needs money so he tries by all means to get gold to sell and get money. Thiscan be done either by selling heads or actually catchingthe fish.36Not everyone had such strong opinions about the distribution of wealth in the region,however. One man said 'it beats me what those heads are used for in South Africa'.7 Thesestories explain much: the presence of privately owned kombis that served as mini-buses,local and regional patterns of entrepreneurship, the 'transition' in South Africa. They alsoserve - as do many narratives in independent Zimbabwe - to make explicit comments aboutthe neglect of children and their vulnerability. But should we read these stories in order to'explain' what they are about? Such explanations by definition would strip these accountsof their specificity, of spirits and surgeons and sniffer dogs that make them credible to thepeople who tell them. Explanations serve to make them credible to scholars like ourselves.38I argue that these heads raise another question, in and of themselves: why don't thesechildren' s spirits come and trouble their killers or the fishermen? Such a questioninterrogates these stories in their own terms. Moreover, approaching the issue of childabduction and dismemberment in this way reveals notions of bodies and their respectiveintegrities in cosmological and medical terms.

Lurking behind western notions of bodily integrity is resurrection. A self-containedbody, to which nothing can truly be added or removed permanently, has its parallels inmodern medicine, with its concerns about transplants and tissue rejection.39 People outsideof this tradition - people without a concept of bodily resurrection - may not favour organtransplants, but their objections and fears are located in different notions of bodies, theircompleteness and their boundaries. The social lives of childrens' heads and corpses' hearts35 Mrs Sarah Rubvukwa,21 July 1995.36 Mr and Mrs Katsande, 18 July 1995.37 Mr CharlesNyamandara,1 August 1995.38 For two accountsof children'sabductionandbody part theft in LatinAmerica that show this, in very differentways, see Michael Taussig, TheDevil and Commodity etishism n LatinAmerica(ChapelHill, 1980) andNathanWachtel, Gods and Vampires:Return o Chipaya, ranslated y CarolVolk (Chicago, 1994), pp. 80-8 1. See alsoNancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: Everyday Violence in Brazil (Berkeley, 1992), Chap. 6,pp. 216-267.39 CarolineWalkerBynum, 'MaterialContinuity,PersonalSurvivaland the Resurrection f the Body:A ScholasticDiscussion in its Medievaland Modem Contexts', n Fragmentation nd Redemption:Essays on Genderand theHumanBody in Medieval Religion (Cambridge,1991), pp. 239-297.


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TheTraffic n Heads 333raise questions about what a body is, and what constitutes the disruptionof its essentialbeing. When hearts and heads were removed and transportedacross borders, and theretradedagainand again, how can families keep track of the dangerousfluids to which theyare now exposed? Who protects the fluid relations left at home and who protects the bodypart sold abroad? Is the commodified body part still part of the relational world ofcosmology and spirits?What follows is schematic and meantonly to be suggestive. Two kinds of Shona spiritsaddress he questionsof wrongful death and distance:shave andngozi. Shave are the spiritsof strangerswho die amongst the Shona; ngozi are the spirits of those who die wrongfuldeaths, translated as 'aggrieved spirits' in the 1960s and as 'avenging spirits' by mystreet-wise researchassistants in the mid-1990s. Much of the literatureof the 1960s and1970s reporteda variety of ngozi, some quite general and some relatively benevolent, butby the postwarera, at least, ngozi were said to be the spirits of the murderedwho tormentedthe families of the murderers, and sometimes, those who stood by and watched themurders.40n the 1960s it was well known that ngozi could travel from district to district,but it is not at all clear, to me at least, if they can cross international oundaries.Moreover,the internationalborders of Zimbabwe contain the history of sanctions, of war, and ofpostcolonial subversion. While Zimbabwe's liberatorshad their bases on the other side ofthe porous borderswith Botswana,Mozambique,and Zambia,the borderwith South Africahas had a longer and less flexible historyof relations of power andwhite rule of which thetrafficin heads is but anotherexample. The South African-Zimbabweanborderis reifiedas few other African borders are. Ngozi, according to my informants,trouble the peoplewho use the hearts and heads they buy, not those who murder or take body parts fromjust-dead corpses. It is not entirely clear what, besides murder, releases an ngozi - theremoval of the head or heart, or its misuse hundredsof miles away. But ngozi reside withor in the removed body part, not in the body that remains in Zimbabwe or is given to atrustingfamily for burial.One healerexplained that the morgue attendantat ParirenyatwaHospital who stole body parts sold them to South Africa: 'They cannot use them fortransplant ere, no; if that were to happen,the beneficiarywould invite ngozi to himself andhis family'.41 Transplantswere so alien that one woman maintainedthat:

local doctors annotperform ransplant.. If an Africandonatesan organ,he becomes ick.As for thewhiteman,he does notget sickbecause heyareused to it .... Ourblackdoctorshave to go outof thecountryo learn ransplants.42Transplantswere things of the truly exotic world. One healer said that body parts weretaken from hospitals to be used in transplants: in the east, they have a way of doing it'.When my research assistant asked if he meant 'east, like Malawi' he replied, 'no, China,Japan,the east'.4 Moreover, organs were not the only thing that could be transplanted.According to anotherhealer:

if someone's eg is amputated,hey do not take someone lse's andtransplantt. They buylimbs from overseas.These limbs are manufactured... blood is also transplantedfter

40 Michael Gelfand, Shona Religion WithSpecial Reference to the Makorekore CapeTown, 1962), pp. 65-109;Michael Gelfand,An AfricanReligion: The Spirit of Nyajena, Case History of a Karanga People (Cape Town,1966), pp. 70-72, 91-106; Fry, Spirits of Protest, passim; David Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and SpiritMediums in Zimbabwe(London, 1985), passim; Pamela Reynolds, TraditionalHealers and Childhood inZimbabwe(Athens, Ohio, 1996), pp. 41-68.41 Mrs Alice Gondo, 11 July 1995.42 Mrs Chibisa-Bira.43 Mr EdwardMashingaidze.


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334 Journal of SouthernAfrican Studiesthoroughests .. Andyou neverknowwho benefits romyourblood, t is the doctor's ecret.44

In such a vision of bodies and their constituentparts, an international rafficin body parts,transplanted broad,makes sense: in terms of deathand spiritsandcosmologies, it is saferand preferableto organs used for transplantsat home. This is not to say that these stories'explain' a global trafficin organs,nor do they representsuch a traffic. On the contrary,Iwould argue that these stories are widespread and more credible because there is aninternational rade n body parts:a global traffic n organsis the context in which a regionaltraffic in heads makes sense.IIIMaking sense is one thing; writing history is another.These accounts of how some peoplebecome wealthy and how otherpeople lose their childrendepictboth regionaltrade andthepower and knowledge of body parts far beyond medical knowledge. But is it history? Iarguethat it is, and thatissues of muti and children's heads provide a way to articulateandrevise regional historiesin the postcolonialera. Stories aboutmuti, hospital mortuaries,andchildren's heads do more than tell of body parts and their travels, they are physicaldescriptionsof the reconstitutionof politics and power within the region.Indeed, for many residentsof southernand central Africa the history of the region was

-told in heads long before the present day. San trophyheads were taken to Englandin theseventeenthcentury;Msiri's head was cut off in the Belgian conquest of Shaba, and wascarried hrough he region, andan Africanhead- probablynot Bambatha's was displayedon a stake afterthe Bambatharebellion was crushedby the Britishin 1906.45But heads nottaken had an imagined life and meaning as well; these heads were said to be hidden inbuildings and monuments and their whereabouts n colonial and postcolonial times revealsa potent critiqueof the sources of power and unity in nation states.In the historicalrecord found in official documents and archives,there is no accountingfor heads. In popularconsciousness in southernAfrica, there is. Shortly after Namibia'sindependence, the Minister of State Security tried to find the whereabouts of ChiefMandume's head. The last king of the KuanyamaOvambohad been killed fighting SouthAfricans and his body was said to be buried in Angola and his head in the Ovambo WarMemorial in Windhoek. Although the Minister simply wanted to relocate the head to amausoleum,no evidence of decapitationcould be foundby scholarsand archivists.46ManyZaireans believed that Msiri's head was put in the royal palace in Brussels.47As I wrote this a Xhosa healer- and a self-proclaimedclaimantto a recently inventedXhosa throne - went to Scotland to recover the head of Hinsta, shot and said to bedecapitatedby a memberof the HighlandRegimentin 1835, althoughseveral historiansandarmy headquartersn London insist that only his ears were removed. The British com-mission of enquiry into Hinsta' murder exonerated the soldier who shot him butdetermined hathis body had been mutilated. Xhosa oral traditionsmaintain that Hinsta'sbody was left headlesson the banks of the NqabaraRiver.48The healer firstsoughtthe headwhere it was said to be: buried in the regimental museum of the Queen's Own High-44 Mrs Rowai Saka.45 Johannes Fabian, Remembering he Present: Popular Painting and the History of Zaire (Berkeley, 1996,pp. 40-43); 'Bushmen's Heads Found in the British Museum', Mail and Guardian,2-8 February, 1996,

pp. 4-5.46 Robert J. Gordon, 'VernacularLaw and the Future of Human Rights in Namibia', Acta Juridica (1991),p. 86.47 Fabian, Remembering.48 'A Headhunter o Banishthe Devil', TheIndependent,8 February1996, sect. 2, p. 2-4.


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TheTraffic n Heads 335landers.49But during his media-intensivevisit to the museum the healer announcedthat amessage from Hinsta's spirit scrawled on a blank television screen the night before - acommon means of communication indicated that the skull could be found in Inverness.Within a week the healer had the skull, only to have it taken from him on his returntoSouth Africa by Xhosa chiefs who wanted 'scientific proof' that the skull was indeedHinsta's. The healer however wanted to keep the skull to end South Africa's tormentassoon as possible: 'until the skull is buried with King Hinsta's body, there will be no peacein South Africa'.50 The healer was very specific about where the spirit was and what itsemotions were:

Hinsta's pirithas got no head.He is walking ll aroundhe country,ightingwitheverybody,makingbig trouble.He is like a devil.... By bringing ackhis headandburying t with hisbodywe will be closingthe dooron thedevilin SouthAfrica.51But such a bold and embodied reunificationwas not to be. Six months later, a forensicscientist in South Africa announced'beyond reasonable doubt that this skull is not thatofthe late king' but of a middle-aged white woman.52Claims that African heads and other body parts, buried in European palaces andmuseums and urgentlyrequiringreburial n Africa, remove those same heads from the neatcategories of scientific memorabilia or proof of savagery, imperial or local.53 Disputes overcorpses - whatever their condition - and how and where they are to be enshrined raisedebates about claims over persons, dead and living, and the importanceof culture andhistoryin animating hose claims.54Zimbabwe's Heroes' Acres, where the freedom fightersare reburied in their home areas, resolve disputes about where the dead shall reside butquicken debates about how (and in Zimbabwe where) the living shall live.55 The polesarticulatedby a head's reputedburial in an imperial building and its reburialwith the bodyfrom which it came describe a gross nationalism, a symbolic unification of a social bodyand a reprimand o those who took the head abroadin the first place.However such a generalisationextracts reburials from their local context and ironicmeanings, in which the dead leader may not have been wholly beloved and the leaderseeking reburialmay not be wholly honourable. n a storyfrom Ghana,JerryRawlings wastold by a 'festishpriest' hathe would need the bones of Kwame Nkrumah o make thejujunecessary to guarantee Rawlings' victory in the 1992 elections. Nkrumah was buried inGuinea and Rawlings faced the task of how to bring his remainsback: in the years afterthe fall of the USSR, few internationaldonors were willing to build memorials to deadsocialist leaders. Finally the Chinese built a monumentwith red marble and fountains onan empty lot next to the old ParliamentBuilding - and before that the Polo Groundonwhich Nkrumahhad organised nationalistrallies - and the monument was dedicated,andNkrumahreburied, n a great spectaclejust before the elections. Prior to that, however, thefestishpriest had told Rawlings that the bones were 'too old and too rotten' to makepowerful juju, although Rawlings won the election anyway.56The history enshrined inwritten sources has the same ending but a differentaccount of bodies and burials. When49 'Xhosa Chief Loses Head but Finds the Spirits Willing', The Guardian,22 February1996, p. 8.50 'Lost andFound:AfricanKing in Scotland?' New YorkTimes,8 March 1996, p. A4.51 'A Headhunter o Banish the Devil', p. 2.52 'Skull is not African King's, After All', New YorkTimes, 25 August 1996, p. 11.53 See Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific(Cambridge,1991), pp. 175-181.54 D. W. Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo,BuryingSM: The Politics of Knowledgeand the Sociology of Powerin Africa (Portsmouth,1992); 'Who Owns the Dead? Science or the Descendants?'Mail and Guardian, 2-8February1996, pp. 4-5.55 MafuranhunziGumbo, Guerrilla Snuff(Harare,1995), pp. 3-45.56 StephanMiescher, personal communication,17 May 1996.


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336 Journal of SouthernAfricanStudiesNkrumah died he was given a state funeral in Guinea, where he had lived since theGhanaiancoup of 1966. Afterrepeatednegotiationsbetweenthe governmentsof GhanaandGuinea,his body was broughtto Ghanawhere, t lay in state in Accra before being buriedat his birthplace.In 1992 Nkrumah'sbody was moved to a new memorial in Accra.s7

Any head severedfrom its owner crosses conceptualas well as political boundaries.InGrahamstown,South Africa, some Xhosa people believed that the head of an old Xhosachief was buriedbeneaththe huge Anglican cathedral hat dominated the city. There wasno such skull, an historian of the nineteenthcenturyXhosa reports, but the cathedralwas'a symbolic statementof the historicaltriumphof settlerdom'.58 My pointhere is somewhatdifferent, that the metaphorical s itself the material,and the ideas enshrinedin popularconsciousness thrive as popularconsciousness. The traffic in heads in and out of a nowpeaceful Mozambiquemust be told in implicitcontrast o the accountsof castration eportedby RENAMO's victims.59How a peace process comes to be describedin part by differentbody parts requiresmore interrogation han I have done here, but the play of heads andgenitals has a wider, regional framework.The returnof women's genitals, at least, is nowenshrined n official consciousnessin South Africa. SaartjieBaartman, he HottentotVenusherself, was dissected by the French naturalistCuvier after she died impoverished n Parisin 1816; her remains were displayed in the Musee de l'homme.60The ANC and Griquaorganisationshave recently demanded their returnto South Africa: 'What purpose does itserve for her to be stuck away in a dark storeroom?'asked the Secretaryof the GriquaNational Conference.'Give herback to us so she can be properlyburied;give her back herdignity and humanity'.1 According to South Africa's Minister for Arts, Culture,Scienceand Technology: 'the process of healing and restoringour nationaldignity and humanity'begun with 'the return of South Africa to the internationalcommunity ... would not becomplete while SaartjieBaartman'sremainswere still kept in a museum'. 2 The differencebetween the traffic n heads and the traffic n nineteenthcenturywomen's genitals is in partthe difference between officially sanctioned narrativesand theiropposite;but it is far lessof a difference than it is a tension between different consciousness of body partsand theirrelationship o historical notions of nationhood,political domination,and regionaleconom-ies.63Nowhere is this clearerthanin the historyof war and its aftermathn the region, in thelines that blur between trophy head and muti, between mujiba (teenage auxiliaries) andngozi. Many scholarsof the regionhave been uneasywith Africans' use of medicineduring57 Adu A. Boahen, Ghana: Evolution and Change in the 19th and 20th Centuries (London, Longman, 1975),pp. 224-226.58 J. B. Peires, 'Suicide or Genocide?', p. 54.59 Human Rights Watch,ConspicuousDestruction: War,Famine, and the ReformProcess in Mozambique NewYork, 1992), pp. 44-48; K. B. Wilson, 'Cultsof Violence and Counter-Violence n Mozambique', Journal ofSouthernAfrican Studies, 18, 3 (1992), p. 535.60 The works that have popularisedSaartjieBaartman'scareer are Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo's Smile:Reflectionson Natural History (New York, 1985), pp. 291-305, andSanderGilman,Differenceand Pathology:Stereotypesof Sexuality,Race and Madness(Ithaca,NY, 1985), pp. 83-88; LondaSchiebinger,Nature'sBody.Gender n theMakingofModernScience(Boston, 1993), pp. 160-172. Baartmanwasdissected nParisnotsimplybecause she died there;Frenchnaturalistswere able to assess race in anatomy n ways their Britishcounterparts

could not do, as only convicted murdererswere legally available for dissection in Britain. Cuvier's Scottishcontemporary,RobertKnox, had dissected bodies purchasedfrom Burke and Hare, which caused him morenotorietythanhis racialtheories. RobertJ. C. Young, ColonialDesire: Hybridity n Theory,Culture,and Race(London, 1995), pp. 121-122.61 'ConcernOver"HottentotVenus"of 1810:Griquaswantto burythe remainsof Khoi womandisplayed n Franceas a freak', The Star [Johannesburg], 3 December 1995, p. 11.62 Press releaseby Dr Ben Ngubane,HighLevelDiscussionsto RetrieveSaartjieBaartman'sRemains romFrance,ANC information< [email protected] , 2 February1996.63 For tensionsbetweenconsciousness,see TerenceRanger, TakingHold of the Land:HolyPlaces andPilgrimagesin Twentieth-CenturyZimbabwe',Past and Present, 117 (1987), pp. 158-194.


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The Traffic n Heads 337warfare and combat. Whether local leaders are called social bandits, warlords, or folkheroes theiruse of muti has often had to be explained or contextualisedby historians.64 utacademic anxieties over how to label such men have obscured African beliefs aboutcausality: is a vaccination that makes people invulnerable o bullets a magical or rationalway to conduct a military campaign? Do the people so vaccinated disaggregate tactics,strategies and weapons from muti in the way of Western historians?65Do they see theirdefeat as the result of superiorweaponryor superiormuti?Muti, afterall, effects outcomes,it producesvictory or defeat, or wealth or death. The line between the head taken to displaypower and the head taken for power is indistinct. While still a student at the UniversityofDar es Salaam, Y. T. Museveni, who was to become an expert on the political uses ofskulls, played off imperialand local categories of invincibility and empiricism:

In a colonial situation, where the master has created the illusion of invincibility by habituallyusing intimidatorycolonial violence on the people, it is necessary to demonstrate that theenemy can be destroyed... Hence, in Mozambique it has been found necessary to showpeasantsa fragmentof a Portuguesesoldier blown up by a mine, or better still the head.66

Such violence was not FRELIMO policy; indeed, FRELIMO's treatment of capturedPortuguesesoldiers was more generally humanitarian.67or this reason the representationof the liberator'strophy heads and their power over an imagined peasantry s even moresignificant: he idea of heads takenis more important hat the reality of unharmedprisonersof war.The postwar, nationalistnarrative n Zimbabwe demonizedmujibas.A wide variety ofpeople, many of them parents, expressed anguish at the deaths orderedby quarrelsomethirteen year olds. One man went so far as to tell Rangerthat the guerrillas never killedanyone in Makoni District, only mujibas did.68Whateverthe actual violence of mujibas-and by all accounts it was enormous- they themselves were often unarmed,69 nd it ispossible to readthese histories of the liberationstruggleas revisions in which childrenwerescapegoatedso that adults could get on with the task of 'reconciliation'. But there are ofcourse many readingsof the trafficin children's heads. Such stories may be cruelparodiesof the wartime abductionof secondary school students to Zambia and Botswana.70Onceagain, children are said to flood acrossbordersbut now with adultsanction;such a readinggives a chilling commentaryon the differencebetween the conductof war and the conduct

64 For Zimbabwe and its neighbours, his point is made variously in T. 0. Ranger, Revolt in SouthernRhodesia,1896-7: a Study n African Resistance (London,Heinemann,1967); Allen Isaacmanand Barbara saacman,TheTraditionof Resistance in Mozambique:Anti-ColonialActivity n the ZambeziValley (London, 1976) and D. N.Beach, Mapondera:Heroism and History in NorthernZimbabwe1840-1904 (Gweru, 1989); Wilson, 'Cults ofViolence', pp. 543ff. For a healthyrevisionof these arguments ee Steven Feierman, Healing as Social Criticismin the Time of Colonial Conquest',African Studies, 54, 1 (1995), pp. 73-88.65 Mutiwasa widespreadpractice nZimbabwe's iberation truggle, he legitimacyof which had to do with whetheror not it was used in wartime. n late 1981 a spiritmediumwas tried or murders ommittedshortlyafter he war'send. Several men she had vaccinated with the 'leaf of life' testified against her. 'Spirit medium "told murdererhe was bullet-proof' ', The Herald, 8 December 1981, p. 1.66 Y. T. Museveni, 'Fanon'sTheoryon Violenceand ts Verification n LiberatedMozambique', n N. Shamuyarira(ed), Essays on the Liberationof SouthernAfrica (Dar es Salaam, 1972), pp. 1-24, quotedin Wilson, 'CultsofViolence', p. 550.67 Wilson, 'Cultsof Violence', pp. 550-551.68 TerenceRanger,Peasant Consciousnessand GuerrillaWar n Zimbabwe, London, 1985), pp. 291-292; see alsoR. S. Roberts, 'The Armed Forces and Chimurenga: deology and Historiography',Heritage of Zimbabwe,7(1987), pp. 31-47; IreneStaunton,Mothersof the Revolution:TheWarExperiences f ThirtyZimbabweanWomen(London, 1991), passim.69 For accountsof teenagers' violence see Lan, Guns and Rain; Kriger,Guerilla War;and Reynolds, Healers andChildhood.For accountsof teenagers' frustrationat being unarmed see Patricia Hayes and Virginia Tyson,Childrenof History (Harare,1992).70 Reynolds, Healers and Childhood,pp. 145-151.


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338 Journal of SouthernAfrican Studiesof peace, a reading with which many Zimbabweansmay agree. The traffic in children'sheads makes ironic the borders children now cross in the peacetime of liberatedsouthernAfrican states.However grim and horrific he stories of children's heads, they are also playful:they arenarrated n a cost-effective world in which the infant-for-kombi ate is clearly set, in whichno ngozi torment Zimbabweans and no ngozi haunt the women who cross borders withthese dreadfulparcels. The trafficin children'sheads is an imaginary,ephemeralconstruc-tion in which ordinary people narrate a vision of the past and the present in activecontradistinction o official versions of that past and their present. Its power comes notsolely from its grotesquevision, but the fact that it is spokenaloudin ephemeraland trivialstories which people tell, in rumourand gossip, which allow for an unofficialhistoryto beheard.LUISE WHITEWoodrow Wilson Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive SW, Washington, DC 20560, USA

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