Cannibalism in Africa

Meat for slaughter.
~ Le Mouvement Géographique (1897)

Acts of cannibalism in Africa have been reported in various parts of the continent, from prehistory to the present.

Quotes

Early history

• Pharaoh is he who eats men and lives on gods ...
  Their big ones are for his morning meal,
  their middle-sized ones are for his evening meal,
  their little ones are for his night meal,
  their old men and their old women are for his incense-burning.
  • The "Cannibal Hymn" found in the grave of Pharaoh Unas (c. 2315 BC)
  • Cited in Wim van den Dungen, "The Cannibal Hymn to Pharaoh Unis", sofiatopia.org (2015)

• The people called the Bucoli​ [Boukoloi] began a disturbance in Egypt and under the leader­ship of one Isidorus, a priest, caused the rest of the Egyptians to revolt. At first, arrayed in women's garments, they had deceived the Roman centurion, causing him to believe that they were women of the Bucoli and were going to give him gold as ransom for their husbands, and had then struck down when he approached them. They also sacrificed his companion, and after swearing an oath over his entrails, they devoured them.
  • Cassius Dio, Roman History, epitome of bk. 72, 4
  • Ernest Cary, Dio's Roman History, vol. 9 (Loeb Classical Library, 1927), p. 19

Middle Ages

• They went further, and reached the stage of eating little children. It was not unusual to find people [selling] little children, roasted or boiled.
• When the poor first began to eat human flesh, the horror and astonishment that such extraordinary meals aroused were such that these crimes formed the topic of every conversation ... But eventually people grew accustomed, and some conceived such a taste for these detestable meats that they made them their ordinary provender, eating them for enjoyment and ... [thinking] up a variety of preparation methods ... The horror people had felt at first vanished entirely; one spoke of it, and heard it spoken of, as a matter of everyday indifference.
• Nothing was more common than this kind of thing, and it would be difficult to find in the length and breadth of Egypt ... anyone who has not been eye-witness to such atrocities.
• A merchant friend of mine ... had seen five children's heads in a single cauldron, cooked with the choicest spices.
  • The Arab physician Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi describing cannibalism during a severe famine in 13th-century Egypt
  • Cited in Reay Tannahill, Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), pp. 49, 55

• I presented to the king of this place ... a quantity of salt which he accepted and he sent to me two most comely slave girls. A few days later I was in his presence and he said to me: "I sent those girls to you, so slaughter and eat them! Their flesh is the best thing we have to eat. For what reason have you not slaughtered them?" I replied: "This is not lawful for us."
  • Report by a 14th-century Syrian visitor to today's Mali
  • Cited in N. Levtzion; J. F. P. Hopkins (eds.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge UP, 1981), p. 273

• A group of these Blacks who eat the sons of Adam came to the Sultan Mansā Sulaimān with their amir. It is their custom to put in their ears big pendants, the opening of each pendant being half a span across. They wrap themselves in silk and in their country is a gold mine. The Sultan treated them with honour and gave them in hospitality a slave woman, whom they killed and ate. They smeared their faces and hands with her blood and came to the Sultan to thank him. I was told that this is their custom whenever they come on an embassy to him. It was reported of them that they used to say that the best parts of the flesh of human females were the palm of the hand and the breast.
  • Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited the Mali Empire in 1352
  • H. A. R. Gibb; C. F. Beckingham, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325–1354, vol. 4 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1994), ch. 25, p. 968

16th and 17th centuries

They have shambles for human flesh as we have of animals.
~ Filippo Pigafetta, translating Duarte Lopez

• They have shambles for human flesh as we have of animals, even eating the enemies they have killed in battle, and selling their slaves if they can get a good price for them; if not, they give them to the butcher, who cuts them in pieces, and then sells them to be roasted or boiled. It is a remark-able fact in the history of this people, that any who are tired of life, or wish to prove themselves brave and courageous, esteem it great honor to expose themselves to death by an act which shall show their contempt for life. Thus they offer themselves for slaughter, and as the faithful vassals of princes, wishing to do them service, not only give themselves to be eaten, but their slaves also, when fattened, are killed and eaten. It is true many nations eat human flesh, as in the East Indies, Brazil, and elsewhere, but to devour the flesh of their own enemies, friends, subjects, and even relations, is a thing without example, except amongst the Anzichi tribes.
  • Filippo Pigafetta and Duarte Lopez, Relatione del reame di Congo et delle circonvicine contrade (Rome: B. Grassi, 1591), ch. 5
  • Translated by Margarite Hutchinson, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo and of the Surrounding Countries (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1967), p. 28

19th century

• I sent my boy for six handkerchiefs, thinking it was all a joke ..., but presently a man appeared, leading a young girl of about ten years old at the hand, and I then witnessed the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life. He plunged a knife quickly into her breast twice, and she fell on her face, turning over on her side. Three men then ran forward, and began to cut up the body of the girl; finally her head was cut off, and not a particle remained, each man taking his piece away down to the river to wash it. The most extraordinary thing was that the girl never uttered a sound, nor struggled, until she fell. Until the last moment, I could not believe that they were in earnest ... that it was anything save a ruse to get money out of me ... When I went home I tried to make some small sketches of the scene while still fresh in my memory, not that it is ever likely to fade from it. No one here seemed to be in the least astonished at it.
  • James Sligo Jameson describing how a slave girl (for whom he had paid six handkerchiefs) was slaughtered before his eyes in the eastern Congo Free State (1888)
  • James S. Jameson, The Story of the Rear Column of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (New York: National Publishing, 1891), p. 291

• A woman [is sold for the price of two goats]. A man [brings the price of three goats], or four if he is plenty large ... If there is as much to eat on a man as on three goats, he brings the price of three goats ... as the point of view of the final purchaser determines the price, and the consumers are cannibals, the price of a man is generally determined by the amount of meat on him.
  • A settler in the Congolese Kasaï region explaining prices charged for slaves sold by the Zappo Zap to the missionary Samuel N. Lapsley, 1891
  • Cited in Samuel Norvell Lapsley, Life and Letters of Samuel Norvell Lapsley, Missionary to the Congo Valley, West Africa (Richmond, VA: Whittet & Shepperson, 1893), p. 175

• The preference of different tribes, more than different individuals of a tribe, for various parts of the human body, is interesting. Some cut long steaks from the flesh of the thighs, legs, or arms; others prefer the hands and feet; and though the great majority do not eat the head, I have come across more than one tribe which prefers the head to any other part. Almost all use some part of the intestines on account of the fat they contain; for even the savages of Central Africa recognise, in common with our own cooks, that fat in some form is a necessary ingredient of different dishes.
• On the road—generally by the smouldering camp fire, or the blackened spot indicating where the fire has been—are the whitening bones, cracked and broken, which form the relics of these disgusting banquets.
  • Sidney Langford Hinde, The Fall of the Congo Arabs (London: Methuen & Co., 1897), pp. 68–69

20th century

I can feel the shudder and feeling of horror that came over me as we looked at them, and saw the agonised look of the poor fellow, who seemed dazed with grief, and said they were the hand and foot of his little girl.

• Among the riverside tribes, ... regular rules of etiquette concerning the disposal of their dead friends exist. If in two villages, say a quarter of a mile away from each other, any member of one community dies, the body is promptly placed in a canoe and taken to the other village, where it is handed over to supply a banquet for the chief and his friends. The compliment, of course, is returned when a member of the other village likewise fulfils the debt of nature.
  • Guy Burrows; Edgar Canisius, The Curse of Central Africa: A Campaign Amongst Cannibals (London: R. A. Everett & Co., Ltd., 1903), p. 212

• Mr. Harris has already intimated to you in a letter of his that while he was down at Jikau, ... a horrible case of murder and cannibalism on the part of rubber sentries occurred in this district. It was of a shocking nature, and has greatly distressed us. On Sunday morning, May 15, just after eight o'clock, I had gone across to Mr. Harris's house, ... when two boys rushed breathlessly in, and said that some sentries had killed a number of people, and that two men had gone by to tell the rubber white men, and that they also had some hands to show him, in case he did not believe them ... Shortly afterwards the two men came along the path, and we heard the boys calling to them to come and show us; but they seemed afraid, and so we went out quickly and overtook them, and asked them where the hands were. Thereupon one of them opened a parcel of leaves, and showed us the hand and foot of a small child, who could not have been more than five years old. They were fresh and clean cut. It was an awful sight, and even now, as I write, I can feel the shudder and feeling of horror that came over me as we looked at them, and saw the agonised look of the poor fellow, who seemed dazed with grief, and said they were the hand and foot of his little girl. I can never forget the sight of that horror-stricken father. We asked them to come into the house and tell us about the affair, which they did, and the following is the story they told us—
  "The father of the little girl said his name was Nsala, and he was a native of Wala, which is a section of the Nsongo District ... On the previous day, although it was three days before they were due to take in the rubber, fifteen sentries came from Lifinda, all except two being armed with Albini rifles, and they were accompanied by followers. They began making prisoners and shooting, and killed Bongingangoa, his wife; Boali, his little daughter of about five years of age; and Esanga, a boy of about ten years. These they at once cut up, and afterwards cooked in pots, putting in salt which they had brought with them, and then ate them."
  • Letter from E. Stannard to Dr. Guinness (21 May 1904)
  • Reported in E. D. Morel, King Leopold's Rule in Africa (1904), p. 444
  • See also: Atrocities in the Congo Free State, Congo Free State § Cannibalism, and Force Publique

• There also remain, as in the Baulchi highlands from which Nigerian tin comes, aboriginal negroes with cannibal tastes.
  • Hamilton Fyfe, "British Empire in Africa II: A Survey of its Lands & Peoples", in J. A. Hammerton (ed.), Peoples of All Nations, vol. 1 (1922), p. 614

• Only twice in the course of my trip have I had conversation with a man who actually admitted having eaten human flesh, though I have spoken to many who have seen it done, and both of them spoke of the present prohibition [of cannibalism] with regret and utterly without shame or real consciousness of wrongdoing, as one speaks of the "drink" prohibition of the United States! One of them, an old man whom I fell into conversation with later, on the road between Wei and Tappi ... told me that among his people, the Jocquellehs, a woman's flesh was highly esteemed and that in the old days it had been the custom to give the upper part of the body to the crowd but that the thighs were reserved for the Chief.
  • Lady Dorothy Mills, Through Liberia (London: Duckworth, 1926), p. 120.

• As recently as 1950, a Belgian administrator was served a meal of "porcupine meat" that he found remarkably delicious. Not until he had finished was he told that the meat came from a young girl.
  • Robert B. Edgerton, The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo (New York: St. Martin's Press), p. 109, on the slow disappearance of cannibal customs in the Belgian Congo

• In 1961 in Uganda, a man offered to sell me human fingers that had been smoked. When I declined in horror, he offered to return with a smoked slab of a young woman's buttocks, a truly "choice cut", as he put it.
  • Edgerton, The Troubled Heart of Africa, p. 255, describing a commercial invitation to cannibalism he received himself

21st century

• Les membres de la population civile, y compris ceux qui ont été capturés par la milice, ont dû assister à des actes d'anthropophagie, de mutilation, d'amputation et de décapitation.... Ainsi, au tshiota, devant la population civile souvent forcée de regarder, ils ont coupé le pénis de nombreux hommes, y compris de chefs de villages qu'ils considéraient comme des traitres, qui venaient d'être décapités, et ont parfois ensuite organisé une cérémonie pour les manger après les avoir préparés, qui, selon leur croyance, leur donne du pouvoir, ou les ont jetés dans le feu.... Dans un autre cas, une femme a notamment vu au tshiota les miliciens manger la partie abdominale de son fils qui venait d'être décapité.
• Un garçon capturé dans le territoire de Kamonia, province du Kasaï, en décembre 2016 par la milice et assigné de force aux corvées précise : « Ils nous amenaient parfois des cuisses humaines qu'on devait cuisiner et des bidons de sang ».... Finalement, une fille de 14 ans intégrée de force dans la milice Kamuina Nsapu en mai 2017 dans la province du Kasaï Oriental explique : « Les miliciens coupaient le sexe des militaires qui avaient été tués mais c'était le plus souvent le sexe des militaires gradés qu'ils coupaient. Ensuite les sexes étaient grillés et mangés. Les garçons coupaient les sexes et les donnaient aux filles. Le sang des victimes était bu... ».
• Certains témoins ont raconté avoir vu des personnes couper, et même cuisiner puis manger de la chair humaine, dont des pénis coupés sur des hommes vivants et des cadavres notamment de FARDC, et boire du sang humain.
  • Members of the civilian population, including those captured by the militia, had to witness acts of anthropophagy, mutilation, amputation and decapitation.... Thus, in the tshiota [initiation house], in front of the civilian population often forced to watch, they cut off the penises of many men, including village chiefs they considered traitors, who had just been beheaded, and sometimes then held a ceremony to eat them after preparing them, which, according to their belief, gives them power, or threw them into the fire.... In another case, a woman at the tshiota witnessed militiamen eating the abdominal part of her son, who had just been decapitated.
  • A boy captured in Kamonia territory, Kasaï province, in December 2016 by the militia and forcibly assigned to chores explains: "They sometimes brought us human thighs that we had to cook, and cans of blood." ... Finally, a 14-year-old girl forcibly integrated into the Kamuina Nsapu militia in May 2017 in the province of Kasaï Oriental explains: "The militiamen cut off the genitals of soldiers who had been killed, but it was more often the genitals of senior soldiers that they cut off. Then the genitals were grilled and eaten. The boys cut off the genitals and gave them to the girls. The victims' blood was drunk...".
  • Some witnesses described seeing people cutting, even cooking and then eating human flesh, including penises cut from living men and corpses, notably of FARDC members, and drinking human blood.
  • UN report on atrocities, including cannibalism, during a violent conflict in the Congolese Kasaï region in 2016/2017
  • United Nations Human Rights Council, "Rapport détaillé de l'Equipe d'experts internationaux sur la situation au Kasaï" (2018), §§ 304–305, 415