The police are investigating a possible violation of a corpse after 18-year-old Mpho Tjale’s penis was severed following his death from an epileptic seizure.
The Tjale family of Daveyton made the grisly discovery when they wanted to wash and cloth his body at a Daveyton mortuary.
According to the deceased’s uncle, Elliot Tjale, his nephew died on February 16.
“After he was certified dead by paramedics, a local mortuary took his body from the house and transported it to another mortuary in Daveyton for storage because apparently they don’t have fridges.
“A day before the burial, his mother removed his underwear to prepare the body and saw her son’s penis had been cut off.”
The uncle said the police were called and the body was transferred to a government mortuary in Springs.
“When we enquired about what happened to Mpho’s penis, everyone said they didn’t know including the man who first fetched his body at home.
“We are still in the dark because we don’t know what happened to my nephew after his death. Nobody at the mortuary wants to take accountability,” he said.
Tjale said after the shocking discovery they had to postpone the funeral with the hopes that the body part will be found, however, this wasn’t the case.
“Mpho’s mother hasn’t been coping. She is stressed and angry because of what happened to her son,” said Tjale.
The City Times approached the local mortuary and spoke to the owner, who identified himself as Edgar.
He said this was the first time this has happened at his mortuary.
“We are confused. The body came to us only for storage. We don’t know if someone tampered with the body before it came to us.”
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Edgar said he handed over CCTV footage to the police to assist with the investigation and said that due to the ongoing investigation he has ceased operation at his business.
Acting deputy national coordinator Abraham Mnguni of the Traditional Healers Organisation said the disappearance of the private part could possibly be linked to the trade in human organs.
According to Mnguni, the transaction is done for various reasons, including for money and also for muthi ‘medicine’.
“If a traditional healer gets involved in such practices then they are not traditional healers but they practice witchcraft and as an organisation, we distance ourselves from such people,” he said.
Mnguni shared that in 2017 they conducted research into the sale of body parts, especially body parts for albinism.
“The people that we spoke to said they wanted to grow their church and others said they wanted to get rich. We also found that the market price for a penis was about R110 000 while female genitalia sold for about R90 000,” Mnguni said.
He urged the public not to fall prey to such disturbing practices.
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