TMZ's Harvey Levin and the murderous 'natives' in the Congo

I grew up in the Copperbelt Province, near the small mining town where Dag Hammarskjöld's plane crashed in September 1961, as he was en route to negotiate a cease-fire in Katanga Province in the Congo. My father, who stuck a small map of the continent on our bedroom wall, and warned us to memorise the 50+ African states within a month of our arrival in Zambia (I was 7), was full of obscure facts that meant little to us at the time. He chugged us to Ndola in his beloved bottle-green VW beetle, and made a sweep around the tiny airstrip: "This is where the great statesman died, perhaps because of treachery," he said.

So imagine my surprise when TMZ's Harvey Levin (yes, the gossip "news" show) pronounced Hammarskjöld's death to have been at the hands of 'natives' 'in the Congo' who tied Hammarskjöld to a tree, and split his body apart. Even as his staff members Googled 'Hammarskjöld' (and mangled Hammarskjöld's name; Levin called him "Dog Hammerfield') and found that he died in a plane crash, Levin holds on to his story: the natives must have  split Hammarskjöld's body, posthumously. He then benign-dictator-style ordered a staff member to get a hold of a "professor" who knows something about the Congo, to confirm his story.

Around 9:30 AM, I went on TMZ's website, and wrote them a note: I grew up not 60km from the crash site…and can assure you that no natives have been splitting anyone apart.

11:25AM: Harvey Levin himself rings me up to say: he distinctly remembers a story about a person whose plane crashed, survived the crash, but then some 'tribe'/the natives tied him to a tree and pulled him apart using some elaborate system of ropes. Apparently it was all over the news, sometime in the '60s – could I find out who it was? I told him that 'Africa' lends itself to such myths, and I'd be surprised if it were true, but he was heading to a meeting. So I assured him I'd put the word out via AIAC.

Natives and Tribals: do you know of such an incident?

I know of Leopold's people splitting people's hands off from their bodies in the Congo, and the US government doing some nasty things to natives from Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., but…