Witchcraft and the Impurities in the African Mind

[Sabella]

Africa is an inimitable continent, rich in complexities and
contradictions; rich in nature’s wonders, yet, filled with man-made
miseries and fetidities. It is both rich and poor and is inhabited by
people who are at once happy and miserable. The African life is pulled
and pushed and contradicted by different poles: primeval sentiments,
superstition, religion, culture, and modernity. The biggest challenge,
of course, is the morbidly superstitious life fueled by poverty and
ignorance.

Superstition, poverty and ignorance accounts for why, many decades
after most societies have progressed, the African life is still loaded
with primitive passions and preliterate conditions. Kenyans and
Nigerians recently demonstrated their primitiveness. On April 22,
2008, the Reuters news service reported that the Kenyan Police “jailed
19 people suspected of burning to death 11 elderly Kenyan men and
women accused of being witches in a case that has horrified the east
African nation…A mob in the Kisii area of west Kenya went from house-
to-house identifying people on a list and burning them to death in
their homes.” In a similar incident in 1983, “eight elderly people
from Kisii were also accused of witchcraft and burned to death in
their huts by a mob.”

Responding to the dastardly event in Kenya, Samira Edi wrote: “This is
manifestly a remnant of a gory past…which preys on the gullible minds,
the primitive instincts of the emotionally vulnerable, the unsure, the
challenged, the weak, the easily manipulated, the insecure… With
certain mystical beliefs, Africans are hunkering in the bunker,
offering themselves up to be brainwashed, in the monumental mistaken
belief that through some cryptic power of black magic or other
mystical forces, they could influence situations and things around
them….And they all come crawling out; the dark deeds of the devil --
voodoo, witchcraft, ritual killings, exorcism, barbarism,
hallucination…”

A month after the sad and regrettable event in Kenya, the Vanguard
Newspaper (May 22, 2008) reported that “a cat allegedly turned into a
middle-aged woman after being hit by a commercial motorcycle… One of
them, it was learnt, was able to escape while the third one was beaten
to death, still as a cat though.” An innocent woman, a mother, a
sister, an aunt, a citizen of Nigeria was beaten to death in the
presence of a crowd, and no one was decent enough to stop the murder,
to stop the barbarity. But of course these types of events are very
rampant in Nigeria -- a country rife with phantasms and mass hysterias
induced by tales of the missing penis, missing scrotums, missing
breasts, shrinking brains, and witchcraft lore.

There are several interpretations of witchcraft. Used in different
context in different societies and in different era, it could mean a
number of things. In general however, witchcraft is associated with
the supernatural, with magic and with evil deeds. There are historical
testaments of witchcraft in all societies, one of the most famous
being the Salem Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. About
three dozen innocent people were killed and hundreds more suffered
unimaginable indignity. But more than any society in the world, the
Africa society and belief system is excessively rife with such belief.
Even though such beliefs are dying out in most societies, it continues
to thrive and assume epic proportion in the African continent.

In Nigeria for instance, the incidence, accusations and extrajudicial
sanctions against witches are routine. And no where is this more so
than in the Niger Delta region where kids as young as 10, and even
younger, are ostracized or killed on mere suspicion. Widows are
sometimes accused of witchcraft in cases where their husbands suffered
sudden or unexplainable death. In this part of Nigeria, tragedies and
misfortunes that are beyond the consciousness or comprehension of the
natives are mostly credited to witches. It doesn’t matter the level of
education, virtually all the inhabitants of the Niger Delta share in
this belief: what cannot be explained, is caused by witches.

Amongst the Ijaw ethnic group, the cost and implication of witchery
are expensive. For instance, the so-called witches are generally never
accorded the dignity of land burial as their remains are usually
thrown into the river. It is therefore not uncommon to find corpses
floating in the rivers and Ijaw waterways. The children and immediate
family members also suffer from public ridicule and suspicion; they
may be maligned, shunned and disassociated from village events. To be
thought of as the children of a witch carries heavy penalty. The
villagers may wonder if (even you) have been “infected and afflicted”
and have the power to do them in.

Belief in witchcraft and all such phenomenon is a product of deep-
seated fear, ignorance, backwardness, illiteracy of the mind,
gullibility, self-loathe and an inability or refusal to take
responsibility for ones stupidity, failings and shortcomings. The rest
of Nigeria is not different in this regard: if your car malfunctions,
you blame the witch; if you have heart attack or stroke or other
medical conditions, you blame your father’s second or third wife; if
you do poorly in school or if you are denied admission to the school
of your choice, you blame the woman down the road. Witches are to be
blamed for everything!

According to Tracy McVeigh of the Guardian (UK), “Evangelical pastors
are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against
young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused,
abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the
fear of their parents and their communities.” Indeed, pastors have now
taken the leading role in pointing accusatory fingers at the innocent.
The white-garment Churches are especially notorious for these. One
wonder how many men and women -- especially women -- have been accused
of evil, and who forever lived a lonely and dejected life? Even in
death, they are slandered. For generation thereafter, their children
and grandchildren may even suffer from such lies and hate.

There are several ironies to the belief in witchcraft; one being that
even among the western educated Africans, there is a widespread belief
in the omnipresence and omnipotence of witches. There are Africans,
who, even with advanced degrees in science and technology and with
residence in the US or other western countries they still belief in
witchcraft, voodoo and other so-called supernatural entities. Perhaps
there is something about the African mind that makes it difficult to
wipe it clean of impurities. “In the Middle Ages people were convinced
there were witches. They looked for them and they certainly found
them.” Today, Africans are still looking and finding and burning them.

What happened in Kisii (Kenya) and in Port Harcourt (Nigeria) was
nothing short of murder. Innocent men and women were killed. A proper
examination of events will reveal that those responsible for the
deaths reveled in the outcomes. They killed as a matter of routine.
They killed without regards for decency and for human life. How sad!
Sadder still is the fact that none of the killers will ever be brought
to justice. The larger community will do nothing about it, and neither
will the government. Such insouciance is a staple of the African
society -- a society where human life is cheaper than a cow. And of
course, such and similar killings will happen again and again and
again. From Sudan to South Africa, and from Senegal to Tanzania, it
happens on a daily basis.

Mr. Sabella Ogbobode Abidde
Washington DC 20059
Tel: 202-290-8191
Sab...@gmail.com