Cannibalism in Africa
In the 1980s,
Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical charity, supplied photographic and other documentary evidence of ritualized cannibal feasts among the participants in
Liberia's internecine strife preceding the
First Liberian Civil War to representatives of
Amnesty International. Amnesty International declined to publicize this material; the Secretary-General of the organization,
Pierre Sane, said at the time in an internal communication that "what they do with the bodies after human rights violations are committed is not part of our mandate or concern".<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>60<span>]</span></a> There were also reports of
child sacrifice followed by consumption of body parts practised by the
ULIMO, led by
Joshua Milton Blahyi, who later became a Christian evangelical preacher. The existence of cannibalism on a wide scale in Liberia was subsequently verified.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>60<span>]</span></a>
A few years later, reports of cannibal acts committed during the
Second Liberian Civil War and
Sierra Leone Civil War emerged.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>61<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>62<span>]</span></a>...
Cannibalism has also been reported from the
Central African Republic.
Jean-Bédel Bokassa ruled the country from 1966 to 1979 as a dictator and finally as a self-declared emperor. Rumors that he liked to dine on the flesh of opponents and political prisoners were substantiated by several testimonies during his eventual trial in 1986/1987. Bokassa's successor
David Dacko stated that he had seen photographs of butchered bodies hanging in the cold-storage rooms of Bokassa's palace immediately after taking power in 1979.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>66<span>]</span></a> These or similar photos, said to show a walk-in freezer containing the bodies of schoolchildren arrested in April 1979 during protests and beat to death in the
1979 Ngaragba Prison massacre, were also published in
Paris Match magazine.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>67<span>]</span></a> During the trial, Bokassa's former chef testified that he had repeatedly cooked human flesh from the palace's freezers for his boss's table. While Bokassa was found guilty of murder in at least twenty cases, the charge of cannibalism was nevertheless not taken into account for the final verdict since the consumption of human remains is considered a
misdemeanor under CAR law...
When people were killed for consumption, on the other hand, they always belonged to specific groups who were considered expendable or even good to get rid of: typically enemies and enslaved people<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>117<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>118<span>]</span></a> and, in those regions where people from unrelated groups were regarded as legitimate prey, more or less any foreigner who did not belong to one's community or a community one had friendly relations with...
many Congolese did not share the negative attitudes towards cannibalism found in various other regions. "On the contrary, people expressed their strong appreciation" of the "meat that speaks" – as human flesh was often called<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>122<span>]</span></a> – "and could not understand the hysterical reactions from the white man's side", as Kajsa Ekholm Friedman remarks...
When the missionary
George Grenfell protested against the purchase of slaves for consumption, inhabitants of the Ubangi area replied: "You eat fowls and goats and we eat men; what is the difference?"<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>74<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>128<span>]</span></a> In the
Bangala region, people argued that "they had certainly done nothing reprehensible, [since] the men or women they had killed and eaten belonged to them in full ownership."...
From the Ubangi, a French colonial officer reported that cannibalism was practised "in broad daylight, not cynically, but as a natural thing ... one eats man as one would eat buffalo or wild boar."<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>131<span>]</span></a> According to the French missionary
Prosper Philippe Augouard, the locals, though frequently butchering and eating a slave child "as if they were an ox or a sheep", were friendly and "amiable" enough; they reacted with astonishment at the missionaries' refusal to "eat such a delicacy"...
At
Bangala Station, when a local chief paid a visit to the Belgian colonial officer
Camille Coquilhat, he had a large party of guests in his canoe, as well as "the remaining half of [a]
steamed man in an enormous pot" – a slave who had been slaughtered and cooked in the morning. When Coquilhat, horrified by the sight, forbade them to land, the chief thought he was joking. He could not understand Coquilhat's anger, arguing, like others, that "this man whom I put to death was my property" and that there was no difference between killing a goat and killing a slave.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>132<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>133<span>]</span></a> Ekholm Friedman comments:
Mongonga bought his victim in the market, as ordinary meat, and he invited his friends to a party with large quantities of beer. It seems like a daily-life activity, free from strong emotions. He was surprised about Coquilhat's criticism and compared his own purchase of the slave with the one of a goat. What mattered ... seems to have been that he had paid for his cannibal victim. He treated him like food, like cattle.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>134<span>]</span></a>
Hinde and other observers likewise note that slaves routinely had to "serve as food" in some areas and that the consumers explained this with a desire for "meat", apparently not considering the humanity of the eaten particularly important.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>89<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>135<span>]</span></a> Human flesh was, however, preferred for its taste,<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>89<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>136<span>]</span></a> and several Bangala men told Hinde that a proper feast had to have a whole prisoner or slave as its centrepiece, while other mammals and birds were considered more ordinary fare.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>137<span>]</span></a> He found similar attitudes in other regions, such as around the
Sankuru River. In one case, a young
Songye chief asked to borrow the knife of the commandant of a recently established colonial post. The man used it to cut the throat of a little slave girl he had purchased, apparently unaware of any wrongdoing. When he was spotted cooking the girl's body, Hinde had him arrested and imprisoned for two months.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>82<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>131<span>]</span></a>
Disasi Makulo, a young
Turumbu man educated by Christian missionaries, vividly experienced the contrast between local customs and the values of his teachers. When he returned in the mid-1890s to his birthplace, the villagers held "a great feast", for which they wanted to slaughter two enslaved people in addition to goats and dogs. Makulo was "greatly indignant" and intervened to save the slaves, but many villagers "wondered in amazement why I felt pity for these slaves. Others accused me of having prevented them from eating the delicious flesh of a human."<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>127<span>]</span></a><a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>138<span>]</span></a> When he returned at a later time, he observed that enslaved people were still being killed for consumption.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>137<span>]</span></a>
Several accounts indicate that the cannibals, while not deliberately cruel, were also unconcerned about making their victims suffer. Instead of being killed quickly, "persons to be eaten often had both of their arms and legs broken and were made to sit up to their necks in a stream for [up to] three days, a practice said to make their flesh more tender, before they were killed and cooked."<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>70<span>]</span></a> Both adults and children and also animals, such as birds and monkeys, were routinely subjected to this treatment before being slaughtered.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>139<span>]</span></a> The missionaries in the Ubangi area were troubled not only because slave children were eaten as a matter of course but also because many of these children had to spend their last night in great pain, placed in the river with broken limbs. But their owners were not bothered, pointing out that this would "macerate the meat and make it more tender". Their own "enjoyments" mattered more to them than the "agony" and the "lives of others", a mission historian commented.<a href="
Cannibalism in Africa - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>137<span>]</span></a>
etc., etc.
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