witchcraft – Pike & Hurricane

Witchcraft in Africa: Practice and belief

Leon Wafula — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 14:36:25 +0000

Growing up, I heard stories about extraordinary occurrences, that were created with the aid of supernatural powers and defied what was considered normal. These powers were either gifts or curses that were bestowed to a select few people, whom we casually referred to as witches or sorcerers. In Africa witchcraft or the belief of it has existed since people started living in communities. Witchcraft in Africa has been studied more extensively as a topic by many anthropological researchers.

In East Africa, the practice of magic has its origin in indigenous African religion. The practice involved the worship of ancestors and performing of rituals that people then believed would guarantee good fortune. With the introduction of exotic religions of Islam and Christianity, these religious practices were discouraged and later labeled as witchcraft. With colonialism, laws were introduced to criminalize these practices and harsh punishments were inflicted on the people that were suspected of engaging in these practices. However that did not stop people from believing and some from practicing it. These colonial era laws are still in force in many parts today.

Witchcraft today

Today witchcraft or magic is still practiced by some groups of people. The contentious issue surrounding it is whether it is real or just imagined. Skeptics argue that many people are quick to link anything that results from inexplicable events as being caused by supernatural powers, like witchcraft. Believers will try to give examples of events that they believe are the result of witchcraft.

The uses range from curing illnesses, creating good fortune, love, financial success, politics and protection from harm. On the negative side it has been linked to causing ill health, bad luck and misfortune to unsuspected people. It is also used as a form of punishment.

In medicine, herbs, incantations and animal sacrifice are some of the activities that are practiced by traditional healers known as witch doctors. Throughout Africa this is the most common type of use of witchcraft. People have testified of being cured from illnesses that modern medicine has failed to cure through the intervention of witch doctors. However, many people have fallen prey to unscrupulous people who pretend to cure only to take their money and fail to perform anything for the unsuspecting patient.

Love potions and spells are also an important part of witchcraft. The main reason women and men in their twenties and thirties visit witch doctors is to get lucky in love. These situations are typically depicted in many films and other works of literature because they form part of the general practice of people in Africa. In many Nollywood films, the main antagonist usually relies on witchcraft to secure their love interest and in most cases they succeed––at least at first. Witchcraft does not only win you love but it also helps you ward off potential rivals for your love interest.

In sports also as in other parts of human life witchcraft has a role to play. In football it is believed by many in sub-Saharan Africa that it affects the performance of players. In the 2002 African Cup of Nations, a former goalkeeper of Cameroon was caught burying bones under the turf and spraying a potion to cast a spell on the field before a crucial semi final game against Zambia. Many teams are also accompanied by witch doctors when going for competitions. Failure to win has often been attributed to the potency of the witch doctors magic against that of the rival team.

Also in politics the belief of witchcraft is rampant. Political leaders in many African nations are either believed to be practitioners of witchcraft or employ very powerful sorcerers who protect their lives, grant them charisma, and destroy their opponents chances of success. In most cases political competition is seen as a battle of who is better at witchcraft. In 2005 the Malawian President moved out of a 300 room presidential mansion claiming that it was haunted and his political opponents had something to do with it. This belief has stopped many upstanding and prospective leaders from engaging in politics for fear of being bewitched.

Tale or testimony?

In Tanzania, I heard stories of people who were subjected to a lot of weird forms of punishments just for doing something wrong to an elderly person suspected of practicing witchcraft. Healthy people would die under mysterious circumstances, some will be infected with diseases and some would have a cloud of bad luck hanging over their heads. Some stories are funny but some are so bizarre that only someone with very high levels of imaginations could make them up.

One such story was a young man who had a sexual relationship with a woman whose father was rumored to be a powerful witch. She got pregnant and her parents demanded the man to take responsibility over the pregnancy to which he refused and denied even knowing her. The father told him to tell everyone in the neighborhood or anyone else who he thinks might be the father of the unborn child to go and notify the woman’s parents and take responsibility for the pregnancy in one week or he should be ready to suffer the consequences.

A week later the young man started experiencing pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, fatigue, and abdominal pains. He visited a local clinic where he was tested and the results were just as shocking to the nurses as they were to him. He was told he exhibited all signs of a pregnant woman. He went home and told his family and neighbors about his mysterious illness. They all deduced that he must have been bewitched and the first suspect was the pregnant woman’s father.

He later went with his parents to visit her, carrying with him something to take to them as a token, demonstrating how sorry the young man was. The parents accepted their apology but the young man was forced to carry the pregnancy for six more months as punishment until in the later stages of the pregnancy it magically reverted back to the woman for her to give birth.

Other incidents have been reported in Kenya where thieves who steal livestock have started behaving like the animal they stole after the owner visited a witch who cast a spell on them.

Goat thieves start bleating and eating grass, cattle thieves start mooing and eating grass, and chicken thieves also start behaving like chicken. In some cases, people have been glued to items they have stolen and cannot remove them from their hands. Like in one occasion it was reported that a thief who stole a television set was unable to put it down and therefore he could only carry it everywhere he went until he decided to return it back to where he stole it from.

Some skeptics claim these stories are not true and are advertisements to supposed witches who are masquerading as gifted while they, in reality, are not. Others believe that these actions and beliefs whether true or imagined help act as deterrents for delinquent behavior.

The dark side of magic

In many societies the belief of witchcraft has played a major role in underdevelopment. People refuse to take part in activities fearing that someone will cause harm to them or a loved one. During the population census in Tanzania many clerks have expressed that people are unwilling to give correct information fearing that the data collected will be used to bewitch them. Therefore affecting the national planning process which relies on the data collected during the census. Some people also refuse to seek help believing that they have been bewitched and they are therefore beyond help.

Another negative effect of this belief is the killings that have been reported of people suspected of being witches. In most cases in Eastern Africa elderly women are accused falsely of practicing witchcraft and executed in public by angry leaching mobs. In recent years what has come to the world’s attention is the plight of people with albinism who have for years been killed and dismembered, whether against the belief that their body parts contain magical power or, quite the opposite, that they are cursed and bring misfortune. So-called “albino hunters” sell corpses for as much as US$ 75,000. Allegations against children are a novel, yet growing phenomenon, according to UNICEF. Children with unusual behavior, such as aggressive or solitary tendencies, run a risk to get accused of being possessed by evil spirits. Orphans taken in by family members or step children are found to be particularly vulnerable. The children face physical and mental abuse, are threatened to be killed, and often end up on the streets.

Despite its negative effects, witchcraft is still part of many Africans’ culture. Proponents of witchcraft claim that it is colonial stereotypes that have transformed an essential aspect of African identity to be viewed as evil. The belief in witchcraft has also been used in history to unite different groups of people to oppose colonial incursions in Africa. One such movement was the Majimaji Rebellion in Tanzania against German colonial rule which broke out in 1905 until 1907. A witch doctor by the name of Kinjikitile Ngwale raised an army from people of 10 different tribes. He gave them a potion with magic powers which they believed would turn the bullet fired by European guns into water. Therefore, rendering them useless. Unfortunately, the rebellion was defeated but the unity that this belief created still inspires many people today.

Related articles:

Witchcraft Brewery: The Dark History of Beer, Witchcraft and Gender

Kidnapped, Butchered, Offered: Human Sacrifices in the 21st Century

Photo Credits:

File:Live Witches.jpg, by SALTN, CC BY-SA 4.0

Serie MAGIE NOIRE, by supermonkeyfly photos, CC BY-NC 2.0

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Witchcraft Brewery: The Dark History of Beer, Witchcraft and Gender

Merle Emrich — Sun, 02 Dec 2018 19:08:05 +0000

Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

Beer, witchcraft and gender – it almost sounds like a game of ‘find the odd one out’ yet there is quite a strong link between the three, a link that is still relevant in today’s society. It is by no means a coincidence that the medieval witch hunts coincided with the transition from one economic system to another, nor that this process is related to the construction of the purely domestic role of women, the spectre of which still haunts us. But to understand this spectre – and eventually overcome it – we must understand where it comes from. Therefore, I invite you to a trip back in history.

While beer is as popular as ever, it is an ancient beverage, first made at least 10,000 years ago and was since then associated with women. Because, in medieval times, water was not safe to drink. People drank beer instead. Therefore, beer (which had less alcohol than contemporary beer) was an everyday product made at home… by women. Many of these women would sell their surplus of beer, and some became excellent brewsters – one of them Hildegard of Bingen, a German nun, who was the first to suggest the use of hops to improve the flavour and make the beer last longer.

But where is the connection to witchcraft? Well, we shall see…

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Between the 15th and mid-18th century an unknown number of European and North American women – for it was (and still is) mostly women – were executed as ‘witches’, the estimated numbers ranging from 60,000 to 100,000. The witch hunts did not only kill thousands of innocent women but also led to a massive roll back of women’s rights, such as there were, and shaped the world and role of women of today. Or as Silvia Federici describes it in ‘Caliban and the Witch’: ‘The outcome […] was the enslavement of women to procreation […] defining women in terms – mothers, wives, daughters, widows – that hid their status as workers.’

To understand why and how the witch hunts changed the role of women, and happened in the first place, we must examine the role of women in medieval society and some of the social processes taking place at the time. A time when feudalism began to transition into capitalism. A time when the plague killed one in three people in Europe and those of the lower social classes suddenly realised that they, due to a decimated population, were suddenly important enough to make demands. Anti-feudal, and consequently anti-proto-capitalist, resistance movements began to form which were often led by women. And women in medieval Europe already had, in addition to their new won political power, a lot of social power, namely ‘magic’.

Magic in this sense refers to “wise women’s” skills as healers, fortune tellers and midwives which made them valuable and respected members of their community. Yet, establishing capitalism with these women holding a large amount of political and social power, as well as people believing in magic, proved a difficult task. Thus, the power of women needed to be broken and magic had to be vilified.

Once women and their skills began to be demonised, the options women had in Western society were even further reduced. And whereas under feudalism your children would help you with your work and eventually, most likely, continue working in your profession, under capitalism they would be send off to work for somebody else’s profit. In such an economic system the role of women is reduced to giving birth to and raising the next generation of workers. The witch hunts played a key role in tying women to the domestic sphere and creating the image of women as ‘chaste, quite, at home, working to support the husband’.

The link between ‘witchcraft’ and the process of pushing women into an exclusively reproductive role becomes particularly evident if we look at the nature of the specific witchcraft charges, and how the image of witchcraft changed within the Church. Between the 13th and 15th century it transformed from denying the existence of witches to adopting the reverse policy. Magic was no longer associated with old pagan traditions and the valuable skills of wise women, but with demons and the Devil, and medieval inquisitors became increasingly suspicious of women falling prey to these demons which they were thought to not be able to resist due to the assumed lack of intelligence.

Not only did the icons of brewsters – a tall pointed hat to be better seen at the market, cats for chasing away mice, the cauldrons used for brewing beer, the brooms used to indicate if beer was available for sale – become symbols of witchcraft. And not only was it dangerous to be a woman with extensive knowledge about plants, which was a useful skill for brewing beer. With the help of the witch hunts, the Church propagating the role of women as being a domestic one only, and the shift from feudalism to capitalism defining the value of women to a purely reproductive role, women were pushed out of commerce. Midwifery was handed over to men. And so was brewing beer.

The discovery of hops that turned mainstream in the 16th century allowed for the commercialisation of beer brewing, as well as the enactment of purity laws. These food laws had the positive effect of outlawing often questionable, and at times even deadly, ingredients. But due to the limitation to water, barley and hops – and consequently increased production costs – brewsters who used different (harmless) ingredients were no longer able to sell their beer. This development was reinforced by the Church’s view of brewsters as temptresses who used their beer to get men drunk and spend their money, and eventually led to brewing becoming a men’s job.

When Shall We Three Meet Again?

Fortunately, the Dark Ages are over. Feminism is alive and kicking and it’s been quite some time since the last witch has been burned. At least in the Western world. And while the witch hunts were not a deliberate plot to oppress women and establish capitalism, we can still say that they proved an effective tool in suppressing rebellion and a challenging of norms. They were a byproduct of the shift from feudalism to capitalism in the process of which the role of women changed dramatically, tying them to the domestic sphere even more than before, and pushing them out of professions of healers, midwives and brewsters. It is an image of women that has left its mark on this society, reflected for example in the debate on the ‘second shift’ in the 1970s (and even today, 2018).

And what about beer? Well, beer used to be a women’s domain. With the standardisation, centralisation and commercialisation of beer production beer became a man’s world and has kept its ‘masculine identity’ until today. Gendered and more often than not sexist beer ads have labelled beer as a ‘manly’ drink. We can see this clearly reflected in the contemporary beer industry: Only 29 percent of brewery workers are women, and a mere four percent of microbreweries have a female head brewster. However, women are becoming increasingly involved in the craft beer scene. So, there is hope that we see a change towards beer becoming neither a ‘female’ beverage, nor something exclusively belonging to men, but a drink that can be produced and enjoyed by all.

by Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

Cascade hops!, Michael, Styne, CC BY-SA 2.0

Happy Halloween!, Chilly & Dull…Kinda Damp Too!, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

medieval woman next to fire, Hans Splinter, CC BY-ND 2.0

Scene from “Labors of the month August”, e-codices, CC BY-NC 2.0

“Nevertheless She Persisted…A Woman’s Place Is in the Resistance”, scattered1, CC BY-SA 2.0

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