The “londola” tradition involves carrying a casket through a village, until the casket — believed to be moving on its own — helps the grieving family identify the deceased's murderer. But the rite often leads to tragedy. In Kakanda, a remote village in Katanga province in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), three individuals accused by a “flying” casket were recently killed.

 

On July 24, relatives of a deceased young man decided to carry his casket through the streets of Kakanda in the hopes that it would lead them to his murderers. A man who was there sent us a video he filmed showing dozens of furious villagers running behind the casket.

 

 

At 0'53, the crowd stops in front of a first house, which is a signal — according to the tradition — that one of the guilty parties is inside. Immediately, several members of the crowd rush to the house and begin to destroy its walls. A few seconds later, the video shows the result: the house is now a pile of debris. All of this was done in front of numerous villagers, most of whom cheered on the macabre scene.

 

In another video — from which we have chosen to display only screen grabs, given the extremely violent nature of the images — a woman, also “chosen” by the casket, is grabbed from her house and thrown to the ground. She is then beaten by villagers who use all kinds of objects — including a cement block, a tire and a plastic chair — to beat the woman to death before burning her body, which they cover with debris. On the same day, two other inhabitants of Kakanda were killed under similar circumstances.

 

When asked about these events by Radio Okapi, the UN radio service in DRC, the administrator of Lubudi territory announced his decision to outlaw the practice. “We cannot tolerate a phenomenon in which people are murdered,” Nkulu Mfwifwi said. He explained that the family of the deceased young man had entered the morgue without the knowledge of its staff, who were preoccupied with another funeral, and had grabbed the casket. An investigation to identify the perpetrators of the three murders has begun; two days after the crimes, 10 suspects were arrested. However, the authorities believe that more perpetrators have escaped.

 

According to our Observers in DRC, the ritual of the flying casket is a Katangan belief largely unknown in the rest of the country. In 2008, several houses were burned and their owners beaten to death during a londola in Ngalaka, a village in the Kambove territory, also located in Katanga province. In 2009, footage of a cheering crowd following a casket in Lubumbashi, the provincial capital, was broadcast on a local television station. In addition, a Katangan news website reported that, last February, a londola had taken place in Sambwa, another village in the region.