Dreaming the Future Closer

Okay, so this is just a little more that I have managed to track down through a little bit more research.  First, I want to share some off-line research into African witchcraft beliefs so that it becomes clearer the debt these Christian models owe to pre-Christian African beliefs.  Then I’m back to some news-ier linkage and commentary.

I. Broader trends

Before getting to the more recent reports, though, I want to quote a short passage about witchcraft among the Bakongo.  Now, the BaKongo are in Zaire, so the beliefs cannot be mapped directly onto the Cross River region of Nigeria.  There are linguistic connections, which hint at broader conceptual ones, but I don’t have the knowledge to do more than suggest the hinting.  However, it is indicative of trends in witchcraft belief:

According to his own account he became ndoki [witch] by biological inheritance when he was still a fetus in his mother’s womb….She handed onto him bad spirits (mpeve zambi) and witchcraft substance (kundu).  Kundu is the invisible organism by means of which a ndoki “eater” accomplishes his work. (64)

This account comes from Death and the Invisible Powers.  It was published in 1993 and reports an event that occurred in the 1950’s.

Similarly:

Most ndoki are initiated…in early childhood….efforts [to initiate older children] often do not succeed, and may have disastrous results. (53)

Let’s note the resemblances: witchcraft beginning in childhood, infancy even, and the witch power itself being related to a foreign presence that resides in the child.

Moreover, there is in Bockie’s account, an extensive discussion of how Christianity established itself in the BaKongo region through witch finding.  Witch confessions and subsequent conversions to Christianity went hand in hand.  These aren’t often destructive, but serve to affirm the community’s group identity and help resolve social tensions.

Terence Ranger, cited in Stephan Palmie’s Wizards and Scientists, notes that Christianity often gains a foothold in Africa as a witch finding cult.  Palmie himself notes that this trend shows up in the New World, too, among Africans displaced by the slave trade.  It is well worth considering how this can have a positive expression, too, helping to maintain (or create) social bonds.

That needs to be weighed alongside the harmful effects, with neither being occluded by the other.  I don’t think I can quite do that, so let me just push the examination of the situation a little further along with that in mind.

II. More news

One thing that I have had no luck finding is anything remotely like verification of the statistics that have been bandied about in regards to children being harmed as a result of witchcraft accusations.  It would make me a lot happier to have some clear insight into those, both in terms of who provided them and how they were obtained.

If it is primarily the NGO’s involved with saving witch children reporting them, we have reason to question their value.  They could be, with the best of intentions, inflating stats in the hopes of improving donations.

I have been able to get a little more history behind the life of the story itself.  Apparently, much of the international attention to the witchcraft trend has its origins in a documentary that ran on a British television network in November of 2008.

Unfortunately, I can’t even look at the clips since there are restrictions about them being viewed in the United States.  That, again, leaves me without much more to go on.

One thing that is worth noting from the description of the documentary:

This Dispatches special follows the work of one Englishman, Gary Foxcroft, who has devoted his life to helping these desperate and vulnerable children. Gary’s charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria, raises funds to help Sam Itauma who, five years ago, rescued four children accused of witchcraft.

That leaves me wondering about the nature of the resistance to Mr. Itauma’s Child Rights and Rehabilitation Project (CRARN).  Since he is drawing money from a UK charity, I wonder if some of this resistance is about concerns over self-determination?  I.e. if some people are responding less to his anti-witchcraft message than to seeing local children being taken away from their communites by ‘foreign’ organizations.

Keep in mind how witchcraft can affirm social bonds.  Helen Ukpabio’s work could strengthen the social fabric of a community.  Ukpabio’s cures provide a means for so-called witches to be re-assimilated into their society.  They come to her and she removes the witchcraft from them, making them ’safe’ to return to their society.  I’m not making a claim that it does good, just that harm is not the necessary outcome.

Which, again, suggests that one more way to study what is going on when Ukpabio’s people get into conflicts with Itauma’s people.  Are they, in part, protesting his refusal to allow his children to be reassimilated into their respective communities by way of being cured of witchcraft?

If this is part of what is going on, then Ukpabio isn’t just making an empty claim when she calls Itauma a ‘wizard.’  A wizard tears at the fabric of a community and this may be how Ukpabio and her people are experiencing Itauma’s separation of the children from the community.

If that is the case, it suggests that one way to ease tensions would be to find ways to integrate the school with the community while maintaining the safety of the children.

It’s worth noting that a belief in witches does not automatically equate to wild support for witch hunting (violent or otherwise).  Here we see one pastor Okoriko’s response to Ukpabio’s work:

“I challenge all prophets and apostles to open contest to prove if there is more than one witch in Akwa Ibom. In the Bible we hear of the Witch of Endor; which means there is always one witch at a time in a town; not 500.”

I can’t quite follow the theological reasoning, but there is some precedent for ideas like this.  Back to Death and the Invisible Powers, Simon Bockie relates this from a confessed witch:

Although kindoki [plural, witches] is everywhere, we have a rule limiting our operational zone to blood brotherhood.  No ndoki is allowed to operate outside his zone, that is, no ndoki is entitled to attack an unrelated individual. (64)

The generalization from clan (‘blood brotherhood’) to town seems an unsurprising sort of variation.

Of some concern to me, though, are articles like this one from the BBC where we find one Mr. Ulup-Aya being taken into custody for claims to have killed 115 witches.  He clarifies that “there was a misunderstanding – he meant he had killed the witch inside the child, not the child themselves” but Nigerian police state:

“We have him on tape admitting to killing,” said Mr Umanah.

“It is now up to him to prove otherwise.”

First, we have reason to think Ulup-Aya is sincere in distinguishing the witch being from the child.  Second, there is no reportage about how the two children with whome Ulup-Aya were found had been treated.  Third, it puts into question the value of the witch statistics being thrown around.  If someone has been arrested for killing 115 children, with no evidence, is that number being used to postulate how many children have been killed for being witches?