The Swaziland Association for Witchcraft and Wizardry has this morning announced plans for a series of strikes and protest actions against the Swaziland government following its controversial decision to restrict all witches from flying above 150m.
The flight altitude restrictions, which were put into law last week, would fine any lawbreaking masters of muti, the dark arts or black magic R500 000 for going over the newly imposed limit.
"It's backwards and utterly ridiculous to put in such a law. It makes no sense," said Swaziland citizen Matt Henderson, who asked not to be named. "No one would have ever thought that such a law would even be entertained by citizens and lawmakers - I mean, we all know Swazi witches use their brooms to fling potions at houses and perform incantations, not fly."
The Swaziland government, however, is adamant that such a move is necessary.
"We can't have sorcery in plane engines," said Civil Aviation Authority spokeswoman Seess Wichcroft. "The tokoloshe-bringing hazards they pose on ground-level must not be allowed in the skies." He added, however, that witches were still free to fly below this level. "We don't want the people of other countries to think we're backwards, anti-progressive and witchophobic."
However, the law has been extensively critised by the Sangoma and N'anga Association of Southern Africa.
"Many of our members are not evil witches, but are still grouped under this hurtful law. Some of them make a fair amount of their money protecting would-be air travellers from the dangers of modern aviation," said Chairwizard Aldus Bumblemoore. "We also have a ten-year contract to provide muti application processes to all the 747s and A-380s in the Swazi fleet." This, said Bumblemoore, constitutes an illegal reversal of a contractual agreement, as the airlines argue that they no longer need protection.
He went to outline the dangers of this arguement. "You see, they haven't yet passed legislature restircting the operational limits of tokoloshes and evil spirits. Unless we have formal laws and limitations on where these insidious creatures can practice their trickery, passengers are still in danger."
The government declined to comment on the matter, saying that they were still waiting for their bone-throwers and intestine-readers to get back to them with an official response.
