Encounters with Witchcraft

Norman N. Miller

Description

Encounters with Witchcraft is a personal story of a young man's fascination with African witchcraft discovered first in a trek across East Africa and the Congo. The story unfolds over four decades during the author's long residence in and many trips to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. As a field researcher he learns from villagers what it is like to live with witches, and how witches are seen through African eyes. His teachers are healers, cult leaders, witch-hunters and self-proclaimed "witches" as well as policemen, politicians and judges.

A key figure is Mohammadi Lupanda, a frail village woman whose only child has died years before. In her dreams, however, she believes the little girl is not dead, but only lost in the fields. Mohammadi is discovered wandering at night, wailing and calling out for the child. Her neighbors are terror-stricken and she is quickly brought to a village trial and banished as a witch. The author is able to watch and listen to the proceedings and later investigate the deeper story. He discovers mysteries about Mohammadi that are only solved when he returns to the village three decades later.

Today, witch-hunting and witchcraft-related crimes are found in more than seventy developing countries. Epidemics of violence against alleged witches, mainly women, but including elders of both genders, and even children is on the increase in some parts of the world. Witchcraft beliefs may lie behind vigilante murders, political assassinations, revenge killings and commercial murders for human body parts.

Through African voices the author addresses key questions. Do witchcraft powers exist? Why does witchcraft persist? What are its historic roots? Why is witchcraft-based violence so often found within families? Does witchcraft serve as a hidden legal and political system, a mafia-like under-government? The author holds up a mirror for us to think about religious beliefs in our own experience that rely heavily on myth and superstition.
Prologue: First Encounter

1. The Colonial Days

An Archeologist’s View of Witchcraft
Ancient Spirit Painting
Lion-men and Colonial Witch Trials
Angry Man with a Cross-bow
Witchcraft and the Congo Pygmies
Crocodile Bile and the Poison Principle

2. Living with Witches

The Witchcraft Trial of Mohammadi
The Woman Who Poisoned a Chief
Witchcraft Symbols in Western Tanzania
Reflections on Mohammadi

3. Through African Eyes: The Arts

The Gift of an Execution Mask
Seeing Witchcraft Images in Nature
The Witch’s Toolkit: Implements and Artifacts
Guns, Throwing Knives and Power Symbols
Spirit Art and the Ideas of an African Chief

4. Witch-Hunters and Witch-Cleansers

Secrets of a Professional Witch Hunter
Using Witch Hunters for Political Coercion
A Famous Witch-Cleanser in Malawi
Faith Healers, Snake Handlers, Herbalists
Kajiwe (Little Stone), Kenyan Witch-Hunter

5. Witchcraft and Violence

Meeting Idi Amin in Uganda
State-Sponsored Terror with Witchcraft
Skin Gangs and Secret Societies
On Trial: Witchcraft Court Cases
A Rough Map of Witchcraft in Eastern Africa

6. The Spirit Wars

How Prophet Movements Use Witchcraft
Healing the Sick by the Sea
“Evil Eye” Among Desert People
Witchcraft violence in an African Christian Church
Missionary Zeal: African Spirits versus Christian Spirits

7. Witchcraft and Juju Economics

Smuggling of Witchcraft Poisons and Products
Long Distance Trade in Protective Medicines
The Healer’s Trade: Witchcraft as a Diagnosis
Commercialization and Urbanization of Witchcraft
Spirit Art, Devil Art and Modern Art for Profit
Witch Beliefs as Barriers to Economic Development

8. Political Witchcraft

Witchcraft Threats and Mafia-Like Politics
The Tanzanian Holocaust: The Sungusungu Killings
Meeting Kenya’s President Moi
Devil Cults in Nairobi: Alleged Satanic Practices
The Use of Witchcraft in Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army
Rebellion in Kenya: The Rise of Mungiki

9. Lessons Learned

“Look, There is No ‘Paranormal’”
Lessons from a Little Boy
How Witchcraft Really Works: An African View
Death by Suggestion: A Final Confession
Killing Elders as Witches, the Rise of Senecide

10. Mohammadi’s Shadow

Return to my Village
Dramatic Changes Over the Years
Why Witches are Never Mentioned
The Truth About Mohammadi’s Life
The Mystery Resolved

Epilogue: The Future of Witchcraft

Further Reading and Bibliography
Acknowledgments and Credits
Index

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 26 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438443591
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

For
Judith von Daler Miller

BOOKS By Norman N. Miller
Kenya: The Quest for Prosperity
Wildlife, Wild Death: Land Use and Survival in Eastern Africa (with Rodger Yeager)
AIDS in Africa: The Social and Policy Impact (editor, with Richard Rockwell)
Faces of Change: Five Rural Societies in Transition (general editor, film textbook)
Research in Rural Africa (editor)
FILMS Produced by Norman N. Miller
Faces of Change 26 film series funded by the National Science Foundation
Forgotten Farmers: Women and Food Security United Nations, Food and Agricultural Organization

Encounters with Witchcraft
FIELD NOTES FROM AFRICA
Norman N. Miller

AFRICAN-CARIBBEAN INSTITUTE

Published in the United States of America State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu
Published in cooperation with the African-Caribbean Institute, Hanover, NH and Nairobi, Kenya
© 2012 Norman N. Miller
All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Cover Art: power emblem from the Ekpe society, Banyang peoples in the Cameroon/Nigeria border areas. Used by permission of the owners. Cover and Text design: Carrie Fradkin, Lebanon, NH Printed by Thomson-Shore
All individuals mentioned in the text are real people. Six names have been changed to protect identities when necessary.
Photographs: All photographs (c) 2011 by Norman N. Miller unless otherwise noted. Due to the in situ origin of these field photos some images are not of the best quality and are included here for historical value. Permissions for all others will be found starting on page 222 and are a continuation of the copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Norman N., 1933-
Encounters with witchcraft : field notes from Africa/Norman N. Miller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4358-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4384-4357-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Witchcraft--Social aspects--Africa, Sub-Saharan. I. Title.
BF1584.A53M55 2012
133.4'30967--dc23
2011042635
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
LIST OF MAPS
East Africa with author's first journey
Sketch Map, Mountain Gorilla area, Uganda
Tabora Region, Central Tanzania
Western Tanzania
Rungwe Region, Southwestern Tanzania
Edom Mwasanguti's Compound, Rungwe District
Malawi-Tanzania Border Area
Bantu Areas: Pastoral vs. Agricultural Regions
Witchcraft Practices in East Africa
Author's Sailing Route, Tanzanian Coast
Smuggling Routes in East Africa
Prologue: First Encounter
M y first experience with witchcraft in Africa occurred in March 1960 in Mombasa, Kenya, just as I stepped off the gangway of the MS Inchanga following a voyage from India. Next to the ship in a dockside kiosk I saw a newspaper with the headline, “European Geologist Attacked in Gogoland: Witchcraft Suspected.” It was the story of a 22-year-old British geologist, William Hanning, who had been prospecting for minerals in a remote part of nearby Tanzania when by mistake he dug into a burial ground. He was believed to be a witch, disguised as a European, out to steal body parts and to destroy ancestral graves.
Those were my first moments on African soil and as I read the article in the shadow of the grimy freighter, the smell of fish and diesel oil blowing along the dock, hair began to stand up on the back of my neck. I was two years older than Hanning and until that point had naively planned to hitchhike across colonial East Africa. The story frightened me enough to stay in the city a few days and learn something about African witchcraft
At the port gate a customs officer told me about a library in a European settler's club in the old Arab quarter of Mombasa. When I found the stucco building, near the sixteenth-century Portuguese-built Fort Jesus, a huge British Union Jack fluttered over the doorway. Further on, off the club's veranda, two large dhows from Oman rode at anchor in the old harbor. Inside, a small, suspicious European desk clerk said that for a “temporary membership” I could use the library, the swimming “bath,” and have meals as I wished. Then he paused.
“You're not a seaman are you? We don't take seamen. There is a drinking club that takes seamen on Nyali Road.”
“Just a traveler,” I said. “Just for the library.”
I paid the fee and was shown into a lounge with wicker furniture, potted ferns and high windows open to the sea breeze. An old man snored in a rocking chair and two women read magazines on a nearby couch. Beyond was the small library with bookshelves reaching to the ceiling. The overall atmosphere was stultifying and only changed two hours later when a small crowd gathered for “sundowners” on the harbor veranda.

Fort Jesus, Mombasa Kenya
On that particular afternoon I learned that “witchcraft” was a set of beliefs and practices found in most of the developing world. A witch in Africa was seen as a living person with hidden powers to harm, not a spirit or ghost or ancestor. Concrete activities attributed to witches included using poisons, casting spells, uttering curses, and intimidating people with the threat of bewitchment—often for money. Witchcraft services could be hired and there was profit in healers protecting people who believed themselves bewitched. Laws against the practices were in place in nearly all African colonies and in British-controlled East Africa it was a crime to claim to be a witch, to carry paraphernalia for witchcraft or to attack anyone believed to be a witch. Most Africans loathed witchcraft and numerous anti-witchcraft movements had been launched across East and Central Africa, the larger ones often led by self-proclaimed witch-hunting prophets in semi-Christian sects.
One of the European settlers who used the library, the snoring man, was Peter Lavers, a retired headmaster from a missionary school in western Kenya. On the third day I watched him shuffle into the reading room and hang his pith helmet on a wall peg. We nodded and I decided to ask him if he had ever encountered a witchcraft case.
“Yes, many times,” he said. “Among the blacks—my black staff.” He then turned slightly red and began to sputter. “Despicable…despicable…an evil practice, sir! Not the business of civilized humans. Not the business of moral people.”
He took a deep breath, searched for his handkerchief and wiped his mouth. Europeans, he said, with his index finger up in the air, were quite justified in colonizing Africa, not only to bring Christianity to the “savages,” but to dispel witchcraft. It was the scourge of the continent, and blacks were very lucky that Europeans had come to save them… save them from their ignorance, disease and witchcraft.
“All are witch doctors, root doctors, bush doctors, rainmakers…
“But there must be different kinds of practitioners,” I said. “Healers, shamans, diviners, they are not all the same. They….”
“All the same,” he hissed. “All are witch doctors, root doctors, bush doctors, rainmakers, even those who claim to prevent grasshopper attacks. All exploiters! Despicable, sir! Despicable!”
The two ladies on the nearby couch in the lounge nodded in agreement.
Over the next five days the books and journals in the library gave me a lot to think about. What was the origin of witchcraft? Did the claimed powers really work? Could it be there really were spirits out there, particularly “ evil spirits ”? Why did so much violence flow from modern cases of witchcraft? Were women always the main victims, the scapegoats?
The library also gave me an introduction to the region. East Africa consisted of Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda, in those days all under British colonial rule. Tanganyika, later renamed Tanzania, had been a German colony until World War I, thereafter administered by the British as a League of Nations Mandated Territory. Uganda was a British protectorate, meaning limited settlement; Kenya, a colony in which European settlement was encouraged. The region I was about to cross was the size of western Europe and if my plans worked out I would see a coastal rainforest, grassland savannahs, agricultural highlands in Kenya, the densely populated Lake Victoria basin, fertile Uganda and the rainforests of the eastern Congo. There were 190 ethnic groups in East Africa including Maasai, Kikuyu, Baganda, Nyamwezi, and Kenya Somali. There were almost as many vernacular languages. Swahili was a trade language. Literacy in 1960 was estimated at around 40 percent, and all three countries were predominately rural, up to nearly 80 percent in Tanzania. The total population of the three countries in 1960 was estimated at twenty-four million.
Several authors tied witchcraft to poverty and when I was able to study the region's geography, I could see why. Most land in East Africa was poor, only around 10 percent of the region was arable, soil erosion was widespread and insect-borne and water-borne disease was endemic. Rainfall for much of the region was episodic, and mainly for that reason, the population was concentrated on the coasts, in the green belt of southern Kenya, around Lake Victoria, in the southern highlands of Tanzania and in southern Uganda.
…witchcraft is a “floo