Latter-Day Witches
Witches are back in the news. Recently in two villages in western Kenya, eleven people were burned alive by mobs of young men. The dead were accused of casting evil spells on children. Local residents won’t cooperate with the police, so arrests for the murders are unlikely. But were the killings really murder, or community defense?
Belief in witchcraft is deeply felt in sub-Saharan Africa. Every witch, it is thought, can perform both good and bad magic. The good includes fertility rights for crops and people, spells that cast out disease, and matchmaking spells. The bad includes hexes that injure one’s business or reputation and poison spells that cause people to become ill and even die.
Who are the witches? They don’t carry union cards, but in each community they are generally known. People will whisper, "This one has the power, and that one." Whenever anything bad happens, the gossip mill begins to churn. Who is responsible, and why?
The gossip isn’t idle chatter. If people feel threatened, they may take action. Witches can be banished or put to death. That happened with striking regularity in South Africa during the 1990s. Economic times were tough and, with the end of white rule, the political landscape was unsettled. Gangs attacked scores of people, often old women, hacking or burning them to death. The explanation was always the same: the victim was a witch who had turned to evil ways.
In modern-day America, we’ve given up on witches. They’re just characters for fairy tales. These stories often involve an innocent outsider who ends up crossing paths with an evil witch or witches. The hero ultimately prevails, as much from pluck and good-heartedness as anything. That’s the pattern in the greatest witch tale of them all, L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.
I’ve always thought it would be fun to turn the standard western witch tale on its head. What would happen if an African witch haplessly crossed paths with a group of western non-believers? Say a self-effacing African hero is forced by some government edict to come west to study at an American university. He would see witchcraft everywhere; the Americans would miss it all, both the dangers and the opportunities. Through much of the story, the witch would race about saving his new friends from their own ignorance, while they laughed at his quaint ways. Then in the finale, something truly inexplicable would happen, and that would give rise to a crisis of belief for everyone.
The point is that for those who truly believe in it, witchcraft is as real as gravity is to a westerner. It’s an undeniable force that acts on everything in the world. That’s the starting point for understanding why anyone would decide to burn a neighbor for being a witch, and why the Kenyan police expect to make no progress in solving the recent crimes there.
Belief in witchcraft is deeply felt in sub-Saharan Africa. Every witch, it is thought, can perform both good and bad magic. The good includes fertility rights for crops and people, spells that cast out disease, and matchmaking spells. The bad includes hexes that injure one’s business or reputation and poison spells that cause people to become ill and even die.
Who are the witches? They don’t carry union cards, but in each community they are generally known. People will whisper, "This one has the power, and that one." Whenever anything bad happens, the gossip mill begins to churn. Who is responsible, and why?
The gossip isn’t idle chatter. If people feel threatened, they may take action. Witches can be banished or put to death. That happened with striking regularity in South Africa during the 1990s. Economic times were tough and, with the end of white rule, the political landscape was unsettled. Gangs attacked scores of people, often old women, hacking or burning them to death. The explanation was always the same: the victim was a witch who had turned to evil ways.
In modern-day America, we’ve given up on witches. They’re just characters for fairy tales. These stories often involve an innocent outsider who ends up crossing paths with an evil witch or witches. The hero ultimately prevails, as much from pluck and good-heartedness as anything. That’s the pattern in the greatest witch tale of them all, L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.
I’ve always thought it would be fun to turn the standard western witch tale on its head. What would happen if an African witch haplessly crossed paths with a group of western non-believers? Say a self-effacing African hero is forced by some government edict to come west to study at an American university. He would see witchcraft everywhere; the Americans would miss it all, both the dangers and the opportunities. Through much of the story, the witch would race about saving his new friends from their own ignorance, while they laughed at his quaint ways. Then in the finale, something truly inexplicable would happen, and that would give rise to a crisis of belief for everyone.
The point is that for those who truly believe in it, witchcraft is as real as gravity is to a westerner. It’s an undeniable force that acts on everything in the world. That’s the starting point for understanding why anyone would decide to burn a neighbor for being a witch, and why the Kenyan police expect to make no progress in solving the recent crimes there.
posted by Rob at 5:19 AM
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