BELGIAN CONGO: Beware of the Crocodiles!

A native named Akva came stumbling into the military post at Ponthierville. 1,400 miles up the Congo River. Blinded from drinking denatured alcohol, he had been expelled from his tribe because he could no longer earn his keep. He began babbling incredible stories about men being kidnaped and killed by creatures that were not exactly crocodiles, not exactly men. Not far away, another native limped into the clinic of a European doctor. He had been on the river in his pirogue, he said, when its bow was seized by the powerful jaws of a crocodile and the boat overturned. While he desperately swam for the shore, the crocodile ripped at his flesh. The doctor refused to believe the man’s story, pointed out that his wounds had been clearly caused by some sharp instrument. “To tell the truth,” said the injured man, “the crocodile had a knife.”

Missing Parts. To plumb this jungle mystery, the Belgian district officer at Ponthierville assigned a native policeman named Bumba, who journeyed among the native tribes—the dominant Panamoli and their rivals, the Basua—and the scattered river fishermen who are born, live and die in their pirogues, made from tree trunks scooped out with fire. There had been a number of unexplained disappearances along the river, many more than could be accounted for by accidental drownings or by voluntary departures to go to the city, or farther into the jungle, or to escape a nagging wife. The crocodiles got the rest, said the natives glibly. After all, in a region where the muddy Congo stretches more than a mile from bank to bank and is dotted with marshes and islands, crocodiles swarm, seizing the careless child, grasping by the foot the woman who washes clothes in the river. But other informants whispered of bodies found in the river strangely mutilated, without hands, heart, liver or sexual organs. These were swiftly buried and forgotten.

Following Bumba’s lead, the authorities began to exhume some bodies. Nine of them (eight men and a woman) were found to have been partly dismembered, apparently to make ritual meals for cannibals. Ten suspects were rounded up and they readily admitted murdering 34 victims, explained that they ate the hand muscles of their victims to gain the skillfulness of the murdered one, the heart and liver to acquire his courage, the sexual organs to gain his power. Like the famed Aniotas or leopard men, Belgian officials say, the murderers often wore hooded, waist-long cloaks of crocodile skin that left their arms free to seize and strike. The attacks mostly took place at dawn or twilight in foggy or hazy weather, and the victims were often paralyzed by fright by the supernatural appearance of the crocodile men.

What’s Wrong? The confessed criminals were members of the Panamoli tribe, most of the victims were Basua. The Belgian authorities feel certain that the society of crocodile men was founded as an outgrowth of tribal rivalry. But though the crocodile men admitted their murders and the ritual cannibalism, they still refused last week to give any reason for the crimes.

Convicted of murder, they accepted their fate with an air of bafflement about the white man’s justice. In their eyes could be read their failure to understand why they had been arrested. True, they had killed Basuas—but are not the Basuas enemies of the Panamoli? True, they had disguised themselves in crocodile skins—but why not? They ate part of their victims’ bodies—but how else could they appropriate the victims’ personal qualities?