Horror of Kenya's 'witch' lynchings

[muriel_volestrangler]

Villagers, many straight from their farms, and armed with machetes, sticks and axes, are shouting and crowding round in a big group in Kenya's fertile Kisii district.
...
Suddenly an old woman breaks from the crowd, screaming for mercy. Three or four people go after her, beat her and drag her back, pushing her onto - what I can now see - is a raging fire.

I was witnessing a horrific practice which appears to be on the increase in Kenya - the lynching of people accused of being witches.

I personally saw the burning alive of five elderly men and women in Itii village.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8119201.stm

Fuck. Fucking murderous superstitious crap.


There'll be a full programme on this on the BBC World Service tomorrow - see details at the link.

[Solly Mack]

1. What you said

"Fuck. Fucking murderous superstitious crap.


Angry, sad and disgusted all at the same time.

[Tanuki]

2. Sarah Palin pals around with known witch hunters. eom

[RandomThoughts]

3. I visited with some people that did the spiritual warfare thing before.

I noticed they got excited and usually changed from worship or learning to anger, judgement, and self righteousness.

[hootinholler]

5. Indeed what's his name Mufree? n/t

[juno jones]

9. Muthee. n/t

[HamdenRice]

4. The problem is witches are real.

I don't mean by that, that there are people successfully using supernatural techniques to cause illness and death.

What I mean is, that from first hand experience of living and traveling in Africa over many years, that there are people who are self described witches, witch-doctors, conjurers, ju ju masters and so on. I've met a number of them. Some of them hope to do or attempt to do good things (communicate with or propitiate one's ancestors, offer magical protection from muggers and thieves, keep pests from the fields, provide life and career counseling, prescribe herbal remedies, offer love potions to the love lorn) and some seek to do evil things (ruin a rival's crops, break up a marriage, or even poison an enemy).

The situation is a lot like Europe when Christianity first became the orthodox dominant religion, but there were still "pagans" and "heathens" -- practitioners of the pre-Christian rites and religions.

So if you spend time in rural Africa you are confronted with this bewildering array of orthodox Christians, break away Christians, practitioners of pre-Christian "pagan" religion, practitioners of a syncretic blend of pre-Christian and Christian religion.

These various religious factions are adopted by different village factions. Families are broken apart because, for example, the father is an orthodox Christian, but the son takes up with a break-away syncretic sect. Poisonous family disputes over land and cattle also become disputes over religion and witchcraft.

These schisms often then get reflected in the threadbare and brutal politics of local government and local institutions. For example, if a local chief switches from Christian to pagan, or a Christian young chief succeeds his pagan father, then whole clans will switch from being on the inside of politics to the outside, with potentially violent results.

The fact that Christianity makes "pagan" religion appear to be something much scarier than it had been makes the spiritual stakes much higher than they would have been without it; various factions will consider each other not just "wrong" but "evil" and consorters with Satan.

I spent a lot of time in the 1980s researching a vast successful cooperative land purchase scheme created by progressive black South Africans in the 1910s through 1930s, but that fell apart in the 30s, in part, because of schisms between orthodox Christians, break away Christians and witches, and that resulted in a huge rural riot in 1940.

To underscore my historical research, in the very years I was doing that research, there was a huge witchcraft scare in another party of the country, in rural Ka-Ngwane, South Africa. Up there, the Christians were joining the South African Council of Churches (and by extension the United Democratic Front/African National Congress) and some witches began informing for the apartheid government. Not all the witches did, and probably not even most, but it made the "progressive" factions paranoid about all the witches, including harmless little old ladies or elderly men practicing field doctoring. The paranoia led young radicals or "comrades" to "necklace" or burn witches, many of whom were undoubtedly innocent (not that even a guilty witch deserved to be killed). The "charges" -- recorded by university researches -- sounded bizarre to an outsider, but invariably included both political and supernatural claims. One of the most common supernatural claim in Ka-Ngwane and Bophutatswana, South Africa, was that the witches put spells on the children forcing them to work like slaves for the witches or the witches clients.

Also, as happened in Europe, the fact that witches exist cause a vast number of people who are not witches to be accused of being witches -- elderly widows, the unpopular, the odd, the marginal, the poor or quarrelsome.

So these murderous episodes are much more complicated than they appear from outside. Obviously, religion and superstition are involved, but it's not "just" superstition. They invariably also involve competition over resources and the patronage of political and clan and "tribal" structures.

[hootinholler]

6. only one nit

Wicca didn't exist then, it's a neo pagan religion.

-Hoot

[HamdenRice]

7. Thanks -- edited out.

[Javaman]

8. so in other words, it all about power and control.

we call them politicians here.