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Conjuring u
Culture & Society
Protect or
Witchcraft
Being accused of being a witch
or sorcerer has never been
comfortable business.
Europe and the Catholic
Church probably take the price for the
nastiest witch-hunts in history. Today
some of the worst places to be accused of
practicing black magic are in Africa.
The catastrophic and often violent
consequence for the mostly innocent
victims begs the question of what the
government can do to curb and manage
witchcraft allegations?
“In the countryside, people’s belief in
witchcraft is strong like iron,” explained
Belinda Masvanhise, who works for the
social ministry of the government.
But this belief expresses itself
differently depending on the social
context.
“As a child my parents would point out
certain old people in our village and tell
me they are witches and sorcerers and
that we shouldn’t play in front of their
houses,” she said.
This is fairly typical of the mild social
exclusion found all over the world that
mostly affects those people not seen to be
complying completely with certain social
norms.
But in some parts of the country,
witchcraft accusations can lead to a
decidedly more brutal outcome, with
accusations frequently leading to
mistreatment and violence against the
accused. This can ultimately lead to
eviction from the village and the cutting
of social bonds.
Often it is an event such as the death of
the member of the community that leads
to accusations of witchcraft.
“In the villages, there is no ‘natural
behind the death,” explains Peter Kaviya.
Guilt is often established in a witchhunting
ceremony. A traditional healer
or ‘prophet’ is summoned to perform a
cleansing ritual on which he or she may
enter a state of trance and is believed to
be ‘guided’ by the spirit of the dead to his
or her murderer.
In some cases the deceased is buried
holding some ‘muti’ that would make him
or her return to haunt the murderer.
Interestingly, those accused of
practicing black magic and driven out
of their communities overwhelmingly
“They are mostly female, poor and
without family support. 99% of them are
poor and old,” says Masvanhise.
persons can vary from place to place.
In Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic
Republic of Congo, accusations are mostly
leveled against children.
NGOs in the city estimate that as many
as two thirds of all of the city’s tens of
thousands of street children have been
chased away from home due to witchcraft
allegations.
Meanwhile, in areas of the Central
African Republic and Angola it is again
mostly old men and women who are
accused, even though there are increasing
reports of child accusations in the former.
The fact that witchcraft accusations
areas begs the question of whether there
isn’t a deeper social mechanism at work
in superstitious beliefs than the mere
searching for explanations when the
seemingly inexplicable happens?
“In regions where there is high
demographic pressure, the reaction to
witchcraft accusations is violence and
eviction.
“It is the poor, practically isolated
women, who are the victims in 90% of
all cases. In the majority the cases, they
are women after their menopause, who
are widows, who are poor, who have no
support, and of whom you want to rid
yourself because they have become a
useless mouth to feed, in the context of
high poverty,” she said.
For the accused, being cast out
of their home and social network is
often catastrophic, especially because
Page 48 The Parade - Zimbabwe’s Most Read Lifestyle Magazine
August 2014