Amid strong police warnings that community members should be more careful of thugs who are said to use muti to swindle people out of their hard-earned cash, another unsuspecting community member became a victim of the thugs at Thohoyandou last week.

An employee of the Department of Roads and Transport, Mr Thomani Dzakani (56) of Halambani village was defrauded of R2 000 which was turned into useless newspaper cuttings shortly after he had withdrawn the money from the Thohoyandou Standard Bank on Wednesday last week.

Last week, we reported the story of Joyce Mbedzi (42) of Tshiulungoma whose R1 850 was turned into newspaper cuttings while her bank card was reduced to an old MTN starter pack. To add more confusion, the thugs also withdrew R1 000 from her account.

Thomani says a good-looking old man approached him shortly after he had withdrawn R2 000 from the bank. "He told me that I had been smeared with muti and he advised me to follow him to a white Golf car parked next to the bank. He told me that the muti is meant to steal all my money and my savings in the bank would disappear unless I did something. It seemed as if I was drunk from the muti, because it was not really me who was there in the car. I felt like I was dreaming and I could not resist anyything the muti man was telling me. The muti man then gave me an envelope and told me to put my money inside to prevent it from being taken away by muti. I then put the money inside the envelope and put it in my pocket without suspecting anything."

Thomani says he told the muti man to accompany him to register a case at the local police station. "He told me there was no use to register a case because my money would be safe. I thanked him for his assistance and he drove off. I did not look at the envelope until I reached my work place. I wanted to pay someone whom I owed money. I took out the envelope and realized that my R2 000 had turned into newspaper cuttings. How can they do this to me because I wanted to use the money to buy food for my family and seeds for my field? I have only heard that people turn money into newspaper cuttings but I never thought it would one day happen to me. I have learned the hard way."

Out of frustration and pain, Thomani approached the President of Vhembe Traditional Healer’s Association, Dr Mmbulaheni Neluvhola who took him to Mirror’s offices in Thohoyandou. Neluvhola advises community members not to throw away the newspaper cuttings whenever they are robbed because they can be used when conducting sacrifices to speak to the ancestors.

"I will speak to the ancestors so that those people must be punished for their evil deeds," said Neluvhola.