Malawi doctor escapes death from bloodsuckers’ lynch mobs
A medical at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital Dr Rodrick Banda says was nearly attacked by heavily armed young men and women near Kameza along Chileka road when he was coming from work last night. 
“After performing a successful operation last night , I was driving home at around 23:30, I met a group of young guys just after Kameza (Chileka road) who almost took my life” Dr Banda wrote in his note.
“They had blocked the road rocks and burning tyres allegedly hunting for blood suckers. In an attempt to turn back I fell into a drain , they had me surrounded carrying stones and some panga knives .
“I told them, am a doctor not a blood sucker and I was coming from the hospital .By God’s Grace they understood me, helped me and took the only cash I had in my wallet . This happened right here in [Blantyre] and not in Mulanje. This nation is so sick.”
The mob on Thursday killed a 22-year-old epileptic man in Chileka, and another man was stoned to death after being suspected of being a blood sucker.
This has brought the number of people killed as suspected blood suckers to nine since the rumors started early last month.
President Peter Mutharika tried in vain to array the rumors which police and medical workers say has no basis.
Mutharika said the reports were “distressing and agonising” and has set up a ministerial committee to look into the matter.
In a meeting with community leaders in the hot spot district of Mulanje on October 13, Mutharika had warned people to stop using witchcraft to “suck people’s blood.”
“If people are using witchcraft to suck people’s blood, I will deal with them and I ask them to stop doing that with immediate effect,” he said.
Meanwhile UN agencies have pulled out workers from districts affected by the rumors. US embassy had already withdrawn Peace Corps volunteers from the affected districts.
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A situation so dire as we currently have in Malawi, elsewhere, could have immediately caused governments to zero in on these mobsters who are killing innocent people just because their crazed minds think they are bloodsuckers. But you know our government isn’t one that would do so.
I have followed this story ever since it broke out and never have I read or heard someone got their blood drained by blood suckers. Instead it is these mobsters who are killing people and they are therefore the real blood suckers.
This docile DPP government should therefore look no further than rounding up these bloodsucker mobsters who are terrorizing innocent people in the country.
Imagine the story of the doctor in this article, why did they have to take his money when it was clear to them that he was no bloodsucker? Can’t the DPP government see that the situation is gone out of control and needs to be arrested? How many lives does the government want dead before it intervenes in the situation? Malawians are crying and are crying for their lost brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, uncles and aunties for no apparent reason. The blood of all these innocent Malawians is upon all of you in authority for doing nothing. This has to STOP and STOP now!
This is the work of Dpp cadets, they want to divert public attention from the 5-1 massacre they suffered to MCP
Are we in a state of anarcky in Malawi? I wonder how a group of young people can be able to set up a road block on a busy road like Kameza Chileka, without the police getting to know about it. Apparently there is a police road block and a police unit on that road. Government says they have beefed up security in the country. Where is the security if such things are happening right on a road where police are ?
These are thugs. If these people had set up this road block for security reasons they should have been with police officers at this road block to make it legal. No wonder they stole money from the Doctor even after explaining himself to them that he is a Doctor coming from work.
Mutharika knows about the disaster of blood suckers just as Bush knew about the collapse of twin tower building #newworldorder …. it’s here!
Mutharika has to resign. An entire professor believing in witchcraft. My foot. What was he doing in class? These are people who pass exams but have no understanding of the content.
This is nachipanti all over again. A whole nation cannot be stupid and start taking matters into there own hands. I feel there is more to this story than told.
Pa chichewa pali mau amati “Utsi sumafuka popanda MOTO” people are saying there are blood suckers out there, koma chonde a MALAWI anzanga tisachite chipongwe munthu oti tikungomuganizira.
If witchcraft and wizards are that much good in mobilizing the whole country to be in the same agenda, then lets use them in unclogging this country from poverty. Can the trusted authority play it more serious and focused. Can they not delegate their powers to the community level to deal with the situation. People block roads, supporters and partners in development are scared for their life. Where are the police, where are the leadres, where are the people self branded to be security authority. Being that is not just sleeping inside fences of state house and riding in black limousine, this is the time to show up your talents and technocrats to safe guard Malawians and all those in Malawi.
If I may ask, who has been killed buy blood suckers since the rumours started
Facts are irrelevant to people who believe rumors.
I am now ashamed to be called Malawian. At first it was killing of people with albinism now blood sucking. Malawi is an evil nation and that’s why we have bad leaders Bad people deserves bad leaders.
Isn’t it about time we started trying to understand the genesis of this bloody national hysteria? It does not help when the President of the nation gives credence to these absurd vampire beliefs by stating: “If people are using witchcraft to suck people’s blood, I will deal with them and I ask them to stop doing that with immediate effect.” Are these the words of a former university professor, or the words of a political leader unwilling to lead?
As I have stated elsewhere, witchcraft provides an alternative power-structure for those who feel outside, and ignored by, the democratic process. It also provides an alternative (informal) education system for those who have been let down by an under-funded, under-manned, and under-resourced government education provision. Many of our rural brothers and sisters are receiving little or no formal education worthy of the name. If they have any schooling at all, it is often intermittent, interrupted by their families’ needs for child labor, or by the availability of more entertaining past-times, such as the village film-shows that are often well patronized by young truant scholars.
That the formal education available to some Malawians fails to teach the rational thinking associated with scientific empiricism is obvious from the statements being made about ‘blood-suckers’. To have any hope of achieving a reasonably accurate understanding of the world in which we live, we must understand the relationship between causes and effects, and we must have enough scientific knowledge to know which causes and effects are possible (because they conform to the laws of the sciences that we understand and have internalized), and which are impossible (because they do not conform to the laws of the sciences that we understand and have internalized). In this respect, our system fails many of those who pass through it.
If the village or township film-show is someone’s main source of contact with, and experience of, the outside world, that person will have a very distorted understanding of that world. For more than a decade now, our movie and television screens have been polluted with worthless fantasy and vampire movies, designed to thrill and frighten semi-sophisticated audiences, and make them suspend for a moment their disbelief in the impossible events they depict. The effects that such movies have on unsophisticated audiences are plain for all to see.
When, in the absence of effective schooling, we have been educated in a world-view derived from witchcraft beliefs, and these beliefs are reinforced by technically brilliant vampire movies, the world we inhabit becomes a terrifying place. To us, what we fear is real. Can we be blamed for what we think are pre-emptive strikes against the forces of darkness that threaten us and our communities?
We don’t need to ransack the villages and comb the forests to find those responsible for this outbreak of ‘madness’. The responsibility lies closer to home. Those who consistently under-fund education, and whose words reinforce erroneous and life-threatening beliefs, should ask themselves if they have earned a share of the blame.
His credential statement , the president, as if he knows something? ???
I AGREE WITH YOU 100%. THUMBS UP
Thitherward, thanks for this input on this forum. It is the shortest treatise on causes of this conflict. Hope to use it in peace and conflict resolution thesis.
Its the mistakes of DPP government at first the used political opponents for CV character damage as a Satanics. Now is out of control and they start twisting as if the opposition is sponsoring violence forgetting all they were doing. Now innocent people are dying that is the danger of selfish politics
Where is the police! Why have citizens taken the law into their own hands? Malawi is in anarchy and has gone back into barbarism and dark age!
This only happens in a country where the president is so weak that he cannot make right decisions. Peter Muntarika is the weakest President in the world. If he is strong, that means does not care about the welfare of Malawians
imagine, if this was Bingu’s time, this matter would not have escalated to this level… this president is so passive i tell you. How can some1 with a fibble mind set up a ministerial committee whn pple are dying like that, instead of tightening the security your setting up an enquiry committee?????? are you serious at all????
If he the president tightens the security then it will obstruct or dwindle their project of blood collection!