A MOZAMBICAN traditional healer Jasten Mabulesse Candude has confessed that he had allegedly been hired by Emmanuel Jay Banda to use witchcraft to kill President Hakainde Hichilema.

I was hired to bewitch HH, confesses Mozambican ‘wizard’

By GRACE CHAILE

A MOZAMBICAN traditional healer Jasten Mabulesse Candude has confessed that he had allegedly been hired by Emmanuel Jay Banda to use witchcraft to kill President Hakainde Hichilema.
Mabulesse Candude has also implicated former Lumezi Member of Parliament Munir Zulu, whom he has accused of having instructed him to bring specific medicines for Banda.
He also claimed that Banda’s mother explicitly instructed him to ensure that President Hichilema “really dies.”
These confessions emerged in a recorded police interview played before the Lusaka Magistrates’ Court, where Candude and co-accused Leonard Phiri are charged with witchcraft-related offences.
The two are alleged to have conspired to use charms, including a live chameleon, in an attempt to harm President Hichilema.
Candude stated in the interview that he met Banda’s mother at her home, who allegedly told him to “ensure that the President really dies.”
He described himself as a witch doctor who normally helps people with healing and good fortune but admitted being told the purpose of this particular trip was to kill.
“When I came, my job was to heal people. But I was told that the person wanted to kill the President. Jay Jay Banda was the one who hired me, although I never spoke to him directly but through his younger brother Nelson. I met his mother, who said the President must really be gone,” Candude said in the video.
He demonstrated various traditional medicines and charms in the footage, wrapping himself in a red cloth and beating himself with an animal tail, which he described as part of his rituals.
Among the items he exhibited were bottles of concoctions, animal tails, and a live chameleon, which he claimed was to be used in a ritual to kill the President by laying it in his path and injecting it.
“Honourable Jay Jay known as Emmanuel Banda he was the one who hired me. I never spoke to him, it was his younger brother whom I was talking to. Munir Zulu, then asked me to come with medicine for Jay Jay. I met the mother to Jay Jay who told me that I should ensure that the president is really gone,” Candude told the court yesterday.The mother to Jay Jay is the one who took me to her place, where she said she came be the one to do the medicine.
His co-accused, Leonard Phiri, admitted in his own recorded interview that he was invited to Lusaka by a man named Nelson and was offered K13,500 to assist in the plot.
He claimed that after arriving, he was told by Candude that their target was President Hichilema. Phiri also demonstrated the use of charms, claiming the concoction mixed with a chameleon would kill a target in five days.
“When I arrived, I was told the medicine was meant for the President. I asked my colleague why we hadn’t done the job yet, and then we were given K5,000,” Phiri said. “We saw the President on TV, and my colleague said he was the one we were sent to harm,” he told the court.