INLSA

Picture: Sizwe Ndingane

The local council school, St Sebastian Secondary, in a dry village about 70km south of Bulawayo, is under investigation by the education ministry after several traumatic weeks when teenage girls ran away screaming that they had been attacked by goblins.

The school is in Sigangatsha village, not far from the national park where Cecil John Rhodes is buried.

Parents say their daughters were attacked in classrooms by dwarf human beings which transformed into baboons. Local education inspector Patrick Dube confirmed the upheavals at the school.

“As a ministry, when we hear issues we investigate. And we are yet to establish what is really happening at the school,” he told a local newspaper.

A goblin, as seen in old English storybooks during the Rhodesian colonial era, is the name given to Tokoloshi in Sindebele spoken in this part of Zimbabwe, or Zvikwambo in the majority Shona language of President Robert Mugabe.

"A goblin is a mythical creature, an evil spirit, and there will have to be cleansing rituals at the school if the hysteria continues,” said Dewa Mavhinga, a Zimbabwe scholar.

"People who see goblins suffer, and witchcraft, as you may call it, happens in both rural and urban communities and across all the tribes.”

A parent who spoke on condition she was not named told the Bulawayo Chronicle of one girl who fell into a trance after seeing a goblin: “I think that she was possessed by demons. She fell into a trance and then all of a sudden she started screaming and kicking into the air vigorously for about five minutes. When she recovered, she said she had seen a baboon trying to slap her.”

Only victims of goblin attacks can apparently see the evil spirit. Earlier this month, Sam Sipepa Nkomo, Water Affairs Minister, said workers had run away from building a dam because it was infested with mermaids.

"These mermaids are also Zvikwambo,” Mavhinga said. – Independent Foreign Service