On March 20, 2026, Eneless Hellen Kamutumbe set out for a local market in the Kisasa area of Kalumbila District, Zambia. The 46 year old wife and mother was there on a business trip from which she would never return.
Moments after a slight physical encounter with 25-year-old Prince Ntambo, he shouted that Hellen had caused his genitalia to disappear. These loud allegations drawing prompt attention pitted over 250 people against Hellen. This mob stripped her naked, pelted her with stones and struck her not only with sticks and wooden planks.
In the midst of the chaos, one courageous bystander intervened, pulling Hellen from the crowd and bringing her into a nearby house in an attempt to save her. But the mob followed in hot pursuit.
They dragged Hellen back outside, beat her again, and killed her, discarding her body on a nearby road.
Police response efforts were also met with violence. While it remains unclear exactly when officers arrived, it is known that the mob also threw stones at them, injuring three officers, and damaging the windscreen on the police vehicle hindering necessary intervention. Emergency Assistance was contacted once the police located Hellen. However, it was too late. Hellen was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital.
The earliest reports suggested that 17 people were arrested which has changed drastically due to serious, needed investigation. As of March 24, 2026, 259 people have been arrested, including 93 women and the ongoing investigation may lead to even more arrests. Those charged are not eligible for bond and will remain in custody at least until their cases are heard.
This raises difficult and necessary questions.
Were some of the women in the mob closely connected to Ntambo—perhaps even his girlfriends—who believed, in that moment, that Hellen had somehow “taken” his manhood simply by passing by or brushing up against him?
Women-on-women violence in cases like this is particularly troubling. Women are often seen as protectors of one another, yet here, some stood at the forefront—participating in the stripping, beating, and killing of another woman.
In the aftermath, the Senior Traditional Leader of the Lunda-speaking community, Chief Musele Musokantanda, ordered the Kisasa Market closed for two months which serves two purposes:
- A form of communal accountability for the failure of bystanders to protect Hellen.
- The establishment of a formal committee to identify who trades at the market and who owns trading spaces which would aid in the overall investigation.
The closure of the market highlights a stark reality: when a community allows violence to unfold unchecked, the consequences ripple outward, affecting livelihoods, trust, and social stability.
At the center of all of this is a truth that cannot be ignored:
Hellen Kamutumbe did not commit a crime.
There is no scientific reality in which one person can cause another’s body to physically alter or “disappear” through supernatural means.
Thus, why was Hellen accused?
The belief in “disappearing manhood” is a long-standing superstition found in parts of Southern and Central Africa. These accusations often emerge during periods of economic hardship, social anxiety, rapid urbanization, and cultural change.
Zambia itself has faced significant challenges in recent years. A severe drought in 2024 led to major power outages and reduced agricultural output. Inflation remains high, and poverty affects an estimated 60% of households. At the same time, the population has grown dramatically—by roughly 43% between 1963 and 2022—contributing to overcrowding, informal settlements, and widening inequality.
In such conditions, uncertainty breeds fear.
When panic takes hold, scientific reality can be hidden and overtaken by superstitious belief.
Zambia is widely considered a Christian nation, and faith institutions play a powerful role in shaping belief systems. This places a responsibility on churches and religious leaders to actively address harmful myths and misconceptions, and to promote education that reduces the stigma surrounding witchcraft accusations.
At the same time, there is a clear need for civil society organizations to step in—offering education, advocacy, and community-based interventions that challenge dangerous narratives before they turn violent.
In response to this crime, the President has called on families to instill stronger values in their children. But this raises a critical question:
Do those values include critical thinking?
Because without the ability to question, investigate, and evaluate claims, belief can easily override truth. Education must equip people with the tools to challenge misinformation and resist fear-driven conclusions.
Who teaches children how to think critically?
Who prepares them to distinguish fact from superstition?
Without those skills, even the most baseless accusation can become deadly.
How does the belief that touching someone causing their genitalia to disappear tie into historical witch-hunts?
In 1486, Heinrich Kramer published the Malleus Maleficarum, a manual for identifying and prosecuting witches that would shape legal systems across the Western world for centuries. In it, Kramer wrote that witches could make a man’s genitals vanish through touch. He called it a glamour — an illusion cast upon the senses. The body was untouched. The harm was not real. And yet he codified it as a prosecutable fact. That manual gave legal weight to the idea that a woman’s body was a weapon, that her touch could destroy a man, and that the man’s claim alone was enough to condemn her. Even when the harm was, by Kramer’s own definition, imaginary.
Courts across Europe used it. And then colonial New England did too.
In 1648, Margaret Jones of Charlestown, Massachusetts became the first person executed for witchcraft in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The accusation against her centered on her touch. Those she laid hands on, the court was told, suffered for it. She was hanged.
In 1662, eight-year-old Elizabeth Kelly of Hartford, Connecticut, died days after Goodwife Ayres visited her home and shared a bowl of broth with her. Her parents testified that Elizabeth cried out: “Goodwife Ayres is upon me. She chokes me. She kneels on my belly. She will break my bowels. She pinches me.” It was Ayres’s specter, not her physical presence, that the courts accepted as the weapon. The harm was invisible. The accusation was enough. That case ignited the Hartford panic and sent people to the gallows.
By 1692, the doctrine was so deeply embedded that Salem courts accepted touch as direct evidence of guilt. The so-called touch test held that an afflicted person would be relieved of their torment when touched by the witch tormenting them. Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, and scores of others across Essex County faced accusers whose bodies were treated as instruments of proof. To touch someone and have them react was, in a Puritan courtroom, as good as a confession.
These were not superstitions held by ignorant people on the margins of society. They were legal mechanisms, applied by educated magistrates, in functioning courts, with witnesses and records and sentences carried out by the state.
That is what the Malleus Maleficarum built. A framework in which a woman can be killed for what a man claims her touch did to his body, and the legal and social machinery around her will not protect her. It will prosecute her.
That framework did not disappear. It travels. It adapts. And on March 20, 2026, it arrived at a market in Zambia.
Mob justice, also referred to as “instant justice,” harms communities by replacing truth with assumption, law with chaos, justice with violence.
Technology now plays a significant role in these moments. In large crowds, someone is always recording which will later serve as evidence. As a result, authorities can identify and prosecute those involved.
If this reality is incorporated into public education efforts, it could act as a deterrent—especially among younger generations who are constantly aware of digital visibility.
Hellen Kamutumbe’s death forces us to confront an enduring question:
How do societies address deeply rooted beliefs that can lead to violence?
Horrific tragedies will continue if these beliefs are not challenged with education, open dialogue, and critical thinking.
And innocent lives will continue to be lost.
Simple truths are powerful:
Do not follow the crowd.
Mind your own business.
Because when fear drives action, lives are destroyed—not only for the victim, but for entire communities left to live with the consequences.
End Witch Hunts condemns the killing of Eneless Hellen Kamutumbe and calls for full accountability for those responsible. Witchcraft accusations are not ancient history. They are a present and deadly reality.
Wherever you are, you can help. Share this story. Say her name. Support organizations working to end witchcraft accusation violence worldwide.
Sources:
NBC Digital News status update announcing arrests of 259 people
Genital Disappearance: Senior Chief Museli orders closure of Kisasa Market for two months | Zambia Monitor
17 suspects apprehended in Kalumbila District mob murder case | Mwebantu