A cannibal restaurant was uncovered after police found eight severed human ears in a cooking pot.
The chilling network of human flesh-eaters was exposed after the disappearance of young mother Zanele Hlatshwayo, 25, in South Africa in 2007.
Nino Mbatha, aged 33, a self-styled traditional healer, handed himself in at a police station carrying a bag of body parts and confessed to being ‘tired of eating human flesh’.
Detectives at first did not believe the healer – known as ‘Mkhonyovu’, meaning ‘the corrupt one’ in the Zulu language – until he pulled a severed leg out of his bag.
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The healer confessed that he served body parts to customers after telling them the food was magic and would lead to success in life.
Mbatha and his accomplice Lungisani Magubane, 32, were jailed for life for Ms Hlatshwayo’s murder. Mbatha’s confession also led to the arrests of five other men.
Judge Peter Olsen said they were guilty of “the most heinous crime”. He said: “What happened in this case is truly awful. It was the stuff of nightmares.
“How one would react in such circumstances is unpredictable. One may well want to unburden oneself of guilt, but later have second thoughts.”
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Ms Hlatshwayo’s bloodied and torn clothes, which her family identified, were found among the human remains in the traditional healer’s home.
“We can only imagine how she begged for her life; she died an extremely painful death,” said her elder sister, Nozipho Ntelele, as she wiped away tears.
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The crime left South Africa’s traditional healers horrified. Phepsile Maseko, from South Africa’s Traditional Healer’s Organisation, said: “Ritual killings and the use of human tissue are not part of traditional healing… this angers us as traditional healers because we have to constantly defend our honest work.”
* Original Article:
https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/150596/cannibal-restaurant-south-africa-human-flesh/amp