Witchcraft Persecution in Africa

Across much of Africa, the persecution of witches is still a terrible problem. Estimates of the number of accused witched murdered with or without trial go into the hundreds of thousands, although as I will explain these numbers beg a lot of questions. The persecution of witches draws on a range of problems: belief that misfortune can be causes by black magic; suspicion of anyone who "gets ahead" by means that seem mysterious to the neighbors; fear of mental illness; sexual jealousy; distrust of the government and its ability to provide justice; occasional encouragement by ambitious political leaders or ministers.

One of the strange offshoots of this problem is the phenomenon of "witch camps." When I first read about these I thought it must be a lie, or maybe a mistranslation, but no. Here is wikipedia's description of the camps in Ghana:

Witch camps are settlements where women in Ghana who have been accused of being witches can flee for safety. Women in such camps have been accused of witchcraft for various reasons, including mental illness. Some camps are thought to have been created in the early 20th century. . . . There are at least six witch camps in Ghana, housing a total of approximately 1,000 women.

From what I have been able to read, mostly news articles, it seems that the protectors of "witch camps" are exploiting the women as cheap labor, making them an odd sort of protection racket.

I have written here about this problem before, noting that some witch hunters have claimed protection for their activities under "freedom of religion." But what got me started on it again this week was my discovery that the Catholic Church is trying to right one of its historic wrongs by fighting the persecution of African "witches":

Those accused of witchcraft have now found a perhaps unlikely charity ally in their fight for justice: the Catholic missionary society missio, which is part of the global Pontifical Mission Societies under the jurisdiction of the Pope, has declared August 10 as World Day against Witch Hunts, saying that in at least 36 nations around the world, people continue to be persecuted as witches.

While the Catholic Church encouraged witch hunts in Europe from the 15th to the 18th century, it is now trying to shed light into this dark practice. Part of this might be a sense of historical obligation — but the real driving force is the number of victims that witch hunts still cost today.

Historian Wolfgang Behringer, who works as a professor specializing in the early modern age at Saarland University, firmly believes in putting the numbers in perspective. He told DW that during these three centuries, between 50,000 and 60,000 people are assumed to have been killed for so-called crimes of witchcraft — a tally that is close to being twice the population of some major German cities at the time.

But he says that in the 20th century alone, more people accused of witchcraft were brutally murdered than during the three centuries when witch hunts were practiced in Europe: "Between 1960 and 2000, about 40,000 people alleged of practicing witchcraft were murdered in Tanzania alone. While there are no laws against witchcraft as such in Tanzanian law, village tribunals often decide that certain individuals should be killed," Behringer told DW.

Other counts of the number of witches killed during Euroupe's witch hunts go as high as 200,000, but the number cited by Behringer is probably close to the average of what historians think, so I have no issue with it.

It is equally hard to get a good count of the "witches" killed in contemporary Africa. This is because in many places "witchcraft" is an accusation thrown around so much that it's hard to get a handle on what it means. Sometimes it seems like a justification for trying to cut a relative out of an inheritance, or something to throw at unfaithful women, or at crazy people, or religious heretics, and many other such cases. So when you read that someone was persecuted as a witch you can't easily tell if people really think sorcery is involved or if they are just very angry and using the worst insult at hand. But if you take all the accusations seriously, you indeed get numbers in the tens of thousands per decade.

African witchcraft persecutions are the sort of problem that gives some leftists fits. On the one hand, the persecutions are brutal, sexist, patriarchal, and oppressive, falling most heavily on poor women. On the other, the people opposing them do so almost exclusively in the name of either western ideas about science and human rights, or else modern, western notions of Christianity. For the Catholic church to fight witchcraft in Africa is about as neocolonial an act as you are ever likely to see, besides being open to accusations of hypocrisy. If you really believe that Africa's problems were mainly caused by westerners and that we should back off and let Africans run their own lives, then the Catholic church is making a mistake. But I disagree, because I don't think it matters at all if beliefs are European or African, black or white, colonial or anti-colonial; I care only if they are true or false, just or unjust, good or evil.