Elifasi Msomi was convicted of murdering 15 people in the rural districts of southern Natal, in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, over about 18 months in the 1950s. He was a Zulu man who had set himself up as a traditional healer and was not doing well at it. He told the authorities that a tokoloshe, a small spirit of Zulu folk belief, had led him to kill. English-language newspapers called him "the axe killer." He was hanged in a Pretoria prison in February 1956, and nine Zulu witnesses, chiefs among them, stood by at their own request to see that the spirit did not rescue him.
The case was widely followed at the time. Writing in Sowetan in 2018, the columnist S'thembiso Msomi called him probably the first serial killer on record in South Africa, and said his claim that a tokoloshe had given the orders drew national attention. In the 1950s his name was taken by one of the most feared gangs in Johannesburg's Alexandra township, and it was still turning up in nicknames, gang lore and newspaper columns decades later.
Little was reported about Msomi's early life. Time magazine, in its report on the hanging, described him as a burly Zulu and a young witch doctor whose trade was going badly.
According to Time, Msomi went to an older and more established healer for advice. He later said that he met the tokoloshe there, disguised as his own son. The older man, in Msomi's telling, instructed him to go with this "son" and to bring back the blood of 15 people for his medicines, starting with a girl. Time put it in the language of a pharmacy: the blood was for the older man's "chemist shop."
That story came from Msomi himself. Whether the older healer was ever identified, questioned or charged has not been reported.
The tokoloshe is a figure of folk belief across much of southern Africa. The Dictionary of South African English defines it as a mischievous hairy water sprite or goblin of African folklore. Time described it in 1956 as a tiny, hairy, deformed spirit, part human and part animal, and wrote that to look at it was believed to bring death.
Time's report also made sweeping claims about Zulu attitudes, asserting that crimes were excused if a person could show the spirit had forced him. The same report noted something more concrete: that the white-run courts of the day had at times treated a defendant's belief in the tokoloshe as an extenuating factor in serious crimes. That was the context in which Msomi's defense was heard. His case raised the question, as Time framed it, of whether the spirit could snatch a man condemned for 15 murders from the gallows.
Over the following 18 months, according to Time, Msomi traveled through the back country of Natal, and he said that the tokoloshe went with him, eating and sleeping at his side. The Sunday Times, in a 2024 column, placed the killings in Umzimkhulu and other parts of what was then southern Natal.
The first victim, Time reported, was a girl. Msomi was jailed, but he escaped, and he credited the spirit with helping him get away. Fourteen more people were killed in the months that followed. The Sunday Times said he used an axe for most of the killings, the reason the English-language papers gave him his nickname.
The names of the 15 people were not reported in the national and international coverage of the case, and little is known about who they were. Time described them only as people of the Natal back country, and the first of them as a girl.
When the fifteenth person was dead, Msomi later said, the tokoloshe thanked him. In Time's account the spirit told him that he had rendered good service, and that the two of them would now wash in the river and go their separate ways.
He was caught for something much smaller. Police arrested him for petty theft, and he was then identified as the man wanted for the 15 killings. According to Time, he admitted the crimes and helped the police with their search for evidence.
Time also reported a detail from his first night in custody after the arrest. He slept soundly, the magazine said, for the first time in months, and left room on his bedding for a companion no one else could see. When his jailers asked about it, he told them it was a friend, just a friend.
According to Sowetan, his defense drew national attention in 1955. The court, the judge, the lawyers and the date of the verdict have not been reported. Msomi's defense was that the tokoloshe had told him to carry out the killings. Drum magazine, recalling the case in September 1968, wrote that at his trial Msomi confessed to all the murders but claimed the spirit had forced him to commit them.
The court did not accept that the spirit excused him. He was convicted of murdering 15 people and sentenced to death by hanging. No appeal was reported.
Local Zulu chiefs, Time reported, feared that the tokoloshe might still be with him and might yet free him. They asked to watch the hanging, and the authorities gave permission.
Msomi was hanged in a prison in Pretoria in February 1956. Nine Zulu witnesses watched. One of them, Chief Manzo Iwandla, was quoted by Time afterward as saying that he was satisfied, and that the tokoloshe had not saved him.
Msomi's name did not die with him. In Alexandra, the crowded township on the northern edge of Johannesburg, a gang led by Shadrack Matthews, with Ginger Mashiane and Alec Dube as his lieutenants, took the name Msomi, according to S'thembiso Msomi's 2018 Sowetan column. The leaders, he wrote, chose the name to frighten people. The Sunday Times column of 2024 said the gang called itself the Msomis or the Msomi Gang and terrorised Alexandra residents, Nelson Mandela among them.
Arnold Benjamin, a staff writer for The Star in Johannesburg, described the gang in an article titled "Kings of Alexandra" for the journal Africa South. Alexandra's gangs, he wrote, had taken the name of Elifasi Msomi, the Natal axe killer who was hanged for his murders. His article followed a preparatory examination at which 66 men faced more than 100 counts, including murder, robbery, arson and extortion. Witnesses described a gang that collected protection money from householders and shopkeepers. One woman told the court that robbers had warned her they were the Msomi, the kings of Alexandra, and asked where she thought she could report them.
The name also turned up in sport. According to Sowetan, the Orlando Pirates footballer Edward Khoza was nicknamed "Msomi" after the Natal killer, and the boxer Joe Ngidi fought as "Axe Killer."
For people who share the surname, the association has been a burden. S'thembiso Msomi, a senior South African editor, wrote in 2018 that older Alexandra residents still greeted him as a member of the gang when they heard his name, although, he noted, no one named Msomi was in it. He has no family connection to Elifasi Msomi.
In the same column, and again in the Sunday Times in May 2024, he described finding his own newspaper photograph published online beside stories about the axe killer. In the 2024 column he wrote that a search for Elifasi Msomi's name brought up the real Elifasi's photograph along with a picture of himself, and that getting the error corrected had proved difficult.
The tokoloshe. Msomi's claim that a spirit ordered the killings, appeared to him as his son, helped him escape and thanked him at the end was his own account. He was convicted regardless.
The older healer. Msomi said an older healer set him the task of collecting blood from 15 people. There is no record that this man was identified or prosecuted, and nothing confirms his part beyond Msomi's own word.
The first serial killer. The description of Msomi as probably South Africa's first recorded serial killer is a columnist's assessment in Sowetan, not an official finding.
Dates and details. The exact dates of the first killing, the escape, the final arrest, the verdict and the hanging have not been established; Time, reporting on February 20, 1956, said only that the hanging had taken place the previous week. The trial judge, the court and the victims have not been named in published accounts of the case.
1950s: Over about 18 months, 15 people are killed in the back country of southern Natal, including the Umzimkhulu area. The first is a girl.
After the first killing: Msomi is jailed and escapes.
Later: He is arrested for petty theft, identified as the man wanted for the killings, and admits them.
1955: His defense, that a tokoloshe ordered the killings, draws national attention. He is convicted of murdering 15 people and sentenced to death.
February 1956: He is hanged in a prison in Pretoria while nine Zulu witnesses, chiefs among them, look on.
February 20, 1956: Time reports the hanging.
1950s: A gang in Alexandra, Johannesburg, known as the Msomis, takes his name; 66 men later face more than 100 counts at a preparatory examination.
September 1968: Drum recalls that he confessed at his trial while blaming the spirit.
August 3, 2018: Sowetan publishes S'thembiso Msomi's column on the gang and the name.
May 5, 2024: The Sunday Times publishes his column on his photograph being attached online to stories about the axe killer.