Broadcast DetailsShow: 3rd DegreeEpisode Title: An Unfinished Ritual
Date: Tuesday, 6 June, 2006
Time: 20h00
Channel: eTV
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Maanda Sendeza lay dead. His genitals had been removed and his tongue sliced out. He was just 23 years old.
His girlfriend, Nyelisani Sidimela lay next to him. Although her lips had been cut away and her chin sliced, she was still breathing.
This is the latest in a series of gruesome ritual murders to rock the small village of Makonde in Venda.
In October last year, three men attacked the young couple as they were sitting chatting under a mango tree. All Nyelisani can remember is a man she knew well attacking her with an axe.
She is the sole survivor of the attack and speaks to 3rd Degree from her hospital bed. She is also able to idenitify her alleged attacker, a bishop who lives a few meters from her home and the same man who presided over her boyfriend’s funeral.
“I could not have stood that myself, because if your body parts are being cut out while you are still alive, its painful. And that pain is now left in me,” says the devastated mother of the dead young man.
This week 3rd Degree investigates the dark world of ritual killings. We interview the sole survivor of this heinous attack and talk to a community rocked by yet another muti murder.