Africa and Witch-killing
By Yemi Ademowo Johnson
The belief in witchcraft is not recent, nor is it a product of the popular Harry Porter series. Rather, according to Godffrey Parrinder, it is “one of the great (sic) fears from which mankind has suffered”. The belief has appeared in many parts of the world, in one form or the other. While it became particularly prominent and developed in Europe in the later middles ages and renaissance periods, the belief in witches and their evil powers have remained with Africans for centuries before then. For Africa, therefore, till today, witchcraft belief is a great tyranny spreading panic and death. This unhindered, thriving, belief, which is devoid of any commonsensical scientific ratiocination, is being buoyed by the excruciating and pitiable living condition of many Africans that they found unexplainable; hence the need for scapegoats, the ‘witches’. Thanks to the modern day fraudsters, the Pentecostal pastors.
The advent pentecostal, and the healing Christian, churches have contributed in no small measure in reinforcing the belief. They accepted the existence of witches and witchcraft and claimed they have the power to protect against its evil powers. All manner of social, health and economic problems are readily carpeted as having ‘spiritual’ dimension blamable on ‘witches’, who are usually aged women and unwitting teenagers.
To market their churches, most of these pastors have resorted to demonizing many aged, mostly poor, haggard looking, widows or barren women and innocent children, as witches that must be ‘delivered’ and ‘saved’ from the power of darkness. This uncritical scapegoating is gaining momentum more than ever before because of the seemingly irredeemable economic condition of living of sub-Saharan Africans. The many frustrated sub-Saharan African people are brainwashed to believe that their major enemies are not corrupt government officials, inhuman government policies nor their, personal, inability to cultivate and explore the best of their potentials in the ‘here and now’ world. Rather they have been sweet-tongued into believing that it is the ‘witches’ in their families and their homes that have been working against their fortune spiritually. Based on the ‘prophesies’, the unfortunate scapegoats, those accused of being witches, are given two options: either to confess to their ‘countless heinous sins’ and be saved/delivered or risk being killed, which in most cases mean being stoned to death. The options are not jejune; yet most of the victims have little time to make up their minds on the path to follow, for indeed none of these forerunners of witch-killing offers an easy way through. In fact, any of them is capable of leading to discriminations of all sorts, social exclusion and, in most cases, death arising from stoning, secluded life, stifling of opportunities, among others.
Like we said earlier, the belief in witches is as old as mankind but witch-killing, (which means the act of killing witches), most especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is a recent phenomenon. In the olden days, African ‘witches’ are not killed but offered sacrifices and appealed to in order to enjoy their support in all endeavours. And no African society supports witch-killing in whatever form. Modern witch-killing has its root in the middle-ages Europe.
One deducible fact based on history is that witchcraft accusations are usually malicious, unscientific and flimsy in nature. How, for instance, can one know a ‘witch’? And how can one be sure that an alleged person is guilty of all the heinous crime accusations levied? How can one be sure that the accusations are not mere victimization tactics? These questions are quite important for a critical look into the Catholic criminalization of witchcraft, for instance, will show that it was directed at attacking the Cathars who were rebelling against the church, being Gnostics and Manicheans; they were accused of being against the church nay the society, therefore they are condemned to be tortured, maimed and to be outrightly killed.
It is however pitiable today in Africa to note that rather than progressing, the continent is regressing into the unprofitable activities of the European middle-ages. Consequently, the continent is today bedeviled by all the indices of under-development that characterized the European middle-ages, where they have taken themselves to. Although there is no state where witch-killing is legally backed in sub-Saharan Africa, yet governmental activities, and that of their agents, have not shown compliance with modern scientific commonsense and strong will necessary and sufficient to promote the human rights of all, regardless of the accusations. For they have been allowing pastors and their ilk to continue, without any serious challenge and prosecutions, with their damaging campaigns and annoying fake prophesies that have led to maiming of spineless, haggard and hungry old women and, unfortunate, innocent teenagers, all in the name of their being ‘witches’.
The deducible implications of this practice, witchcraft and witch-killing, are numerous. Here are some of them:
1. The religious campaigns popularizing and blaming witchcraft for all woes have led to the killing of countless women, who are secret breadwinners in their family and denied many children the chance of growing up normally due to the attached stigma, of being ‘a small witch’.
2. Houses and properties have also been burnt or touched based on accusations of perceived community leaders' inability to help 'find' the community witches.
3. Because of the prevalence of the belief, rather than work on and cooperate with government in the poverty eradication efforts many religious sub-Saharan Africans have resorted to consulting witchdoctors, or the Sangomas, for sanctification.
4. The belief has also hindered the growth of and the cultivation of scientific inquiry that is needed for scientific and technological breakthrough in contemporary Africa.
5. Finally, the belief has perpetually remain gender biased, a cunning way of carrying on with the malicious traditional attack on the women folk, discriminatory and fictitious.
The major consequence of the above is that the belief in witchcraft has stunted the growth of unchained creativity and made many sub-Saharan Africans to recoil unnecessarily to fate, visiting only pastors, Alfas (the Muslim witchdoctors) and the Sangomas/Babalawos (the traditional witchdoctors) to ward off and cleanse themselves of the 'curses or family jinx' trailing them. Lean income, rather than been spent wisely are given to these modern day 'fraudsters' who ride in big cars for the spiritual ‘protections services’ they provided. In some cases, micro-finance loans have been used in funding ‘witchcraft cleansing rituals’ rather than the small scale business that it was disbursed for.
The effect of these on poverty will not be far-fetched if one can pause to critically examine their effect on poverty eradication policy execution. How for instance, can a man who is jaundiced with the belief in irredeemably bewitched life participate in poverty empowerment programme when a pastor has told him that “unless he begged one old woman in his family, he would never succeed”? Again, what do you expect to happen to children whose mothers have been sent to their untimely graves based on the flimsy allegation of being ‘witches’? How can a community that hinged their predicaments on bewitchment think out and work with policies meant to empower and reduce poverty in such communities? What about the effect on techno-scientific development, the language of globalization? I can go on endlessly but there is no need, for my point is made, that the parochial belief and heinous act of killing others for being witches are inimical to workable poverty eradication policies and indeed the growth of science and technology in Africa.
Onward!
‘Yemi Ademowo Johnson, socio-political philosopher and applied anthropologist, is editor, YouthSpeak, Belgium © 2009
