A village in Eastern Equatoria State/photo, courtesy

Authorities in Eastern Equatoria State have recused from a mob attack a 70-year-old man accused of preventing rain in Labalwa village of Torit County.

Atari Jacob who is the County Commissioner said the villagers mainly youth locally known as Monyo-miji, and women attempted to arrest Marcelo Ogwana and beat him up for stopping rain in the area.

They accused the old man of performing witchcraft and averting rainfall in the area.  Jacob says the incident occurred on Monday.
“Something happened in Labalwa which is under Torit Municipality, where some group of youth and women tried to arrest one of the old people that he is the one making rain not to come in their place,”

“So they were about to beat the 70-year-old man but we actually went and recused that old man and we tried to tell them not to beat that man because issues of rain are natural,

‘But the community members insisted that he’s the one doing witchcraft activities to stop the rain from raining. So, this is the only thing happening in Torit Municipality,” said the county official.

Atari called on the community to desist from such negative traditional beliefs saying rain is a natural occurrence and that global warming has affected the climatic conditions.

Atari advised the locals against taking the law into their hands.

“My advice is, our community must desist from this traditional belief of witchcraft and other things should not be allowed,

“Sometimes we have natural occurrences like global warming. This should not be the cause of making someone accountable for it,

“The issue of crimes, everybody must abstain from it but rather report any group for wrongdoing,” he said.

Attacks on traditional rainmakers have been common among some communities in Eastern Equatoria State.

In April last year, rainmaker Augustino Molong was lynched BY a mob of youth while at a funeral in Mohina.

They accused him of failing to bring rain to the area where crops are allegedly drying up on farms, threatening their livelihoods. No arrest was made, but the authorities had announced the deploy security personnel to the area to apprehend the suspects without specifying the date.