Ed. Note: This isn't a "South African" practice, it's an African practice, specifically a negro practice. It has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with race. South African Whites didn't practice this kind of bizarrely horrific stone age "medicine." Negroes, on the contrary, all over Africa, as well as any other country they're allowed into, regularly revert to this kind of behavior. The civilized world -- including its intellectual giants, like Kant and Hegel-- has known this for centuries. Africa is dubbed "the Dark Continent" for deep, metaphysical, evolutionary and cultural reasons, NOT "simply because of the color of their skin," as the jews and their media are wont to parrot. Jews, of course, subvert White commonsense en route to White culture as a whole. Jews -- like White-hating jewess Ilana Mercer's father -- were behind the "anti-apartheid" subversion of South Africa that returned this diamond of civilisation to the savage inhumanity depicted in this article. Moreover, jews are the prime movers behind the importation of African negroes into White countries from America and Europe to Australia.

EATONSIDE, South Africa, Sept. 22 — Neighbors here say they have never seen anyone emerge from the healer's shack, a tin-walled affair crowned with a cross atop a metal rod, proclaiming to have been cured. Still, the word in this treeless squatters' camp of trash-strewn yards and chicken-wire fences south of Johannesburg was that his medicine was good.

That was until three weeks ago, when 3-year-old Thabang Malakoane disappeared as his mother napped in their own shack next door. When his body was found, in a garbage bag under a thin layer of dirt, the left hand and genitals had been severed. The brain, heart and other vital organs were gone.

What remains is the rage of neighbors convinced that the healer and another man carried out an unspeakable crime, and the deep-rooted superstitions that the police suspect prevent witnesses from talking.

People in this dense camp openly accuse the healer and a second man of an ancient and gruesome practice: murder so that human body parts can be taken for what is known as muti — the term is derived from the Zulu word for medicine.

"If they come back here, the community is going to kill them," said Gladys Mbanzi, 34, who lives one dirt road away and is the mother of two boys. "If they disappear, we will burn down their shacks. The community has found them guilty."

The police have taken the two men into custody, partly for their own safety. Yet after weeks of inquiry, Detective Isaac Nketle says he is stymied. "People just don't want to come forward," he said.

In Africa's richest and most developed society, there may be no more bare and more sensitive divide between past and present than this. Muti murders, especially of children, remain disturbingly common; South Africa's police investigate an average of about one a month, said Gerald Labuschagne, who heads a police investigative psychology unit.

Thabang's is the third suspected case in three weeks. Six men were arrested in Free State Province on Sept. 9 for trying to sell a human head, a pair of hands and feet, a heart, genitals and intestines. On Sept. 20, picnickers found the head of a 5-year-old floating by a dam near Johannesburg.

Most South Africans are revolted by muti killings, and the police say they diligently pursue each case. But reaction to such cases sometimes seems muted, possibly because of the frequency of the crime, and of killings in general in a nation that records about 22,000 murders a year.

Another reason, experts say, may be that muti killings illuminate an aspect of an ancient culture that modern South Africans would prefer to leave unexamined. "It tends to get swept under the carpet," said Anthony Minnaar, a senior researcher with Johannesburg's Institute of Human Rights and Criminal Justice Studies. "It points to a belief in witchcraft and spirit worship — things people don't want to acknowledge."

South Africa's medical system boasts modern hospitals and pharmacies, but it coexists with bone-throwing healers whose prescriptions sometimes include the most grisly of curatives. Faith in them is more widespread than this nation's modern veneer suggests, some say.

The killings follow a pattern. A client approaches a healer, who orders a third person to collect body parts. A hand in a shop's doorway supposedly attracts customers; genitals allegedly enhance virility or fertility; fat from a stomach is prescribed to ensure a good harvest. Lore says parts severed from live victims are most potent because their screams awaken supernatural powers. Parts from children are considered especially strong.

The South African police say that most muti killings occur in rural areas, where tribal structures and superstition are strongest. But urban areas are not exempt.

Last year, a man was arrested in Krugersdorp, just west of Johannesburg, after offering to sell a human head for about $1,300. Also last year, a journalist posing as a buyer at a traditional medicine market under an elevated highway in Johannesburg was offered a human brain, an eye and kneecaps for about $230, according to a news report.

Mr. Labuschagne, the police psychologist, said even some Westernized members of the country's political class believed that human parts had medicinal properties.

"I don't think these beliefs are limited to a certain class of people or even a certain level of education," he said. To some who believe that the supernatural can determine one's success and that plant- or animal-based mixtures ward off evil, human muti is "just pushing the envelope a little further," he said.

The government sought in 1995 to combat muti killings by investigating witchcraft-related violence. The report urged government regulation of traditional healers and an education campaign to "liberate people mentally." But an official with the province's Security Ministry said the campaign never got going. Parliament has yet to enact legislation regulating traditional healers.

Takalane Mathiba, who heads a private association that has registered 80,000 traditional healers, said that while his group tried to help the police, it could not control the fly-by-night operators who trade in human organs and bones.

Some police officials see one bright spot: public outrage is gradually replacing fear of the healers' supposed powers. In the Free State case, the arraignment of the six suspects drew 200 protesters demanding their execution.

Thabang Malakoane's neighbors flocked one recent afternoon to his mother's shack, 13 square feet plus an outhouse, vowing to carry out vengeance should the police fail. But witnesses have yet to step forward with any solid leads.

Like most squatters, Thabang's mother, Mosele Malakoane, lives in a shack of caked mud, dung and rusty sheets of corrugated tin, its meager roof covered with black plastic weighted down by stones. Inside are a few sticks of wooden furniture, a shred of curtain hanging off a tiny window, a paraffin stove and the double bed she shared with her son. Thabang had two worn toys: a steam shovel and a small gray airplane.

The healer, whom police identified as Emmanuel Moloantoa, moved in next door less than a year ago. A young man, identified as Samuel Khanye, lived adjacent to him.

Ms. Malakoane said her son "was always at my side." But on Aug. 30, she left him outside with a 5-year-old playmate and took a nap. What happened next is murky. Detective Nketle said Mr. Khanye told him that he played with Thabang, then took him to the healer's shack because he could not find Thabang's mother.

Mr. Moloantoa was holding a prayer session for about 10 people, the detective said. Neighbors said they heard drums pounding. After Thabang's body was found, Ms. Malakoane said, one woman told her that she had seen the boy alive in the healer's shack that night.

But Detective Nketle said that woman had refused to talk to him. Mr. Moloantoa denied that the boy was ever in the shack