Skeptics, believers and the indifferent
by Damon Leff
"When you look at the kind of thing that happens in some of these [party] congresses, it's unbelievable that people will not give one another a chance to speak. You would have thought that one of the things we were trying to promote in our struggle [was that] we said we are not going to allow ourselves to be dictated to, we are not going to be shouted down. Our young
people are learning bad habits. We should have been training them. Now we think that shouting or using language where you are threatening people is equal to debating."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (June 2008 – in response to Julius Malema)
The conversion of bias into prejudice takes many forms. Men who are taught to believe that women who wear short skirts are asking to be raped are more likely to verbally and or physically assault women caught infringing their bias. [14] Men who
are taught to believe that Lesbians are ‘unnatural’ are more likely to commit “corrective rape” in an attempt to shame and ostracize Lesbians. [15] Men and women who are taught to fear Witchcraft as a cause of misfortune, illness and sudden death are more likely to make an accusation of Witchcraft against someone within their own family or neighborhood. [16]
Jacob Zuma’s assertion on 15 December 2008 that COPE leaders were Witches set the inevitable stage for more accusations of Witchcraft. IOL reported on 26 December that two women and a six-year old girl were killed by two men in a Christmas day attack and that the suspected motive behind the murders was believed to be accusations of Witchcraft. [17]
This apparently unrelated Christmas-day Witch hunt, one of many that occur every year in provinces throughout South Africa, passed unnoticed by toyi-toying ANC cadres in Zwide township as they cheered in concert with Tokyo Sexwale as he proceeded to verbally attack COPE members on a public platform by saying, "Our mothers are taken, house to house, they are also paraded on TV, these people are performing witchcraft with our mothers....They are liars. You can't have respect for people who use older people in that fashion.” [18]
COPE spokesperson Palesa Morudu responded to Sexwale’s defamatory statement. "Sexwale and his party must understand that the constitution guarantees freedom of association. Everybody has a right to belong to a political party of their choice, including senior citizens in our society. Linking senior citizens who are women to witchcraft at a political rally is downright irresponsible, dangerous and highly disrespectful of the elderly. Sexwale must therefore retract these offensive remarks and apologise to the many elderly women who have joined Cope." [19]
In the new South Africa the rule of thumb on Witchcraft is, if you aren’t a Witch, do not rock the proverbial sinking struggle-boat or you may just be accused of being one. If you are a Witch, forewarned is forearmed. No matter what the constitution and its bill of rights enshrines regarding prohibiting hate speech and discrimination, Witch-hunters abound in many guises.
General public attitudes towards Witchcraft may be categorized into three groups; skeptics, believers and the indifferent.
Skeptics argue against accepting a belief in Witchcraft as anything other than superstition.
Professor Thias Kgatla of the University of the North and a team from the Holland Institute of Social Studies and Utrecht University suggest that rural communities be made aware of the causes and prevention of illnesses and natural disasters such as lightning strikes so that they do not blame such incidents on witchcraft. Kgatla said witchcraft could be raised as part of the school curriculum so that it can be relegated "to the scrap-heap of history in Africa" as it had been in Europe. [20]
Believers fuel Witchcraft accusations in response to perceived spiritual attack, financial misfortune, unexplained illness, chronic poverty, social unrest, jealousy, paranoia, and in response to a desire for revenge or retribution.
Scholars from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) expressed concern that the church continued to dismiss the dark arts as mere superstition, thereby unwittingly helping the devil advance his reign. For that reason, Christians who suffer because of witchcraft are often dismissed by priests as being superstitious, the scholars said. Because they do not get adequate help from pastoral agents, they seek the assistance of witchdoctors or join the mushrooming evangelical denominations that offer healing, exorcism and deliverance, they said. Many African priests fear witchcraft or are ignorant of their own power to confront the devil, the scholars said, adding that Christians visit diviners and magicians to seek practical solutions which the church and science apparently do not offer. [21]
The indifferent are incapable of understanding that a religious minority who self-define as Witches may do so not because they seek to be maligned, ridiculed and shamed into obsequious silence, but because they are what they say they are.
Local government and housing spokesperson Simphiwe Kunene said people should not jump the gun. "It is very presumptuous for people to think this draft is infringing on their constitutional rights. This is not an Act, just a sketch to show what we are trying to prevent," said Kunene. [22] The sketch to show what Kunene (and the Mpumalanga law makers who had drafted
it) were trying to prevent was called the Mpumalanga Witchcraft Suppression Bill of 2007 and as its name suggests, the Mpumalanga Legislature intended not only to prevent accusations of Witchcraft, it also intended to suppress Witchcraft entirely in Mpumalanga. [23]
In order for me to attempt to illustrate the unintentional callousness on the part of ‘the indifferent’, consider this scenario in a slightly different paradigm. Let’s assume, for the sake of example only, that this Bill was called the Jewish Suppression Bill. In this imagined scenario the very thought of suppressing the practice of Judaism in Mpumalanga would, to any reasonable person, constitute a grievous act of religious intolerance. One only need look at the speed with which the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fatima Hajaig, apologized to the South African Jewish Board of Deputies after it lodged a complaint against the Deputy Minister for stating (on 14 January 2009) that the United States was “in the hands of Jewish money power” to see the ANC government’s commitment to, in the words of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa “fighting all forms of racism in all its manifestations, including anti-Semitism”. [24]
When discussing Witchcraft in South African society however, existing legal, cultural and religious stereotypes and biases have already pre-determined, at least for the vast majority, a conformist negative social response to a complaint by actual Witches against a prejudicial use of the word Witchcraft on a public political platform.
To paraphrase comments received by the South African Pagan Rights Alliance (SAPRA) from ANC members on the ANC’s official Facebook group [25] in response to a complaint lodged by the Alliance [26] against Tokyo Sexwale’s Witchcraft accusation against COPE,
ANC Respondent A. - I must say that you are one of the most confused witches I know...the witches that we know as black people are real witches...a witch cannot stand on top of a table and claim that I'm a Witch because that is dangerous.
ANC Respondent B. - I think there is a fundamental difference between 'witchcraft' as used by Tokyo [Sexwale] and rituals as practiced by 'witches' which if I remember correctly are Druid rituals. You are thus picking a non-fight. The issue of 'witchcraft' being referred to is of African origin, not European. As to your issue, it really is a non-issue. 'Witchcraft' in the African tradition does not refer to any group of people, who practice magic and rituals as part of their religious
practice. It generally refers to people who harm others via some mysterious powers. Sexwale derives from the African tradition. I guess Sexwale thinks COPE is a mysterious force. Witchcraft (African tradition) and I am probably going to be attacked for this, is based on superstition, nothing more. Crimes against people called 'witches' have more to do with communal tensions that with any real 'witchcraft'. You choose to identify as a Witch instead of a Wiccan precisely because it gives you the opportunity to be outraged when people refer negatively to witches, witchcraft, etc. I suggest 'growing up', may be a more appropriate response that your outrage. Attacks on people for practicing witchcraft (African version), must be brought to an end. When African witchcraft is finally seen as a superstition, you can have the word 'witch' all to yourself. If Tokyo does apologize to SAPRA I shall be very angry.
ANC Respondent C. - Eeyo! Personally I think you should shut up and get a life. This is nonsense, there are REAL issues and challenges that confront this country, grow up, wake up and smell the ANC, were going nowhere.
Despite taking great pains to explain SAPRA’s position, the reasons and motivations for lodging the complaint against Sexwale, and despite outlining the ANC government’s already documented commitment to seeking an end to Witchcraft-related violence through the adoption of the Thohoyandou Declaration, in order to justify its relevance for discussion on an ANC forum, the entire topic was removed by
the group’s administrator on 6 February.
This summary dismissal of the concerns of South African Witches by indifferent ANC cadres actively deployed to campaign for the ANC, in a very real sense, to represent the policies and ideals of the ANC, confirms the dire observation made by Archbishop Tutu in June of 2008 in response to Julius Malema’s “kill for Zuma” statements quoted at the start of this chapter.
ANC members on the ground are merely reflecting the inherent social bias and prejudice underscored in public statements by Jacob Zuma and some of his most ardent campaigners. This prejudice is already manifesting itself in brazen discrimination against South African citizens who are indeed the real Witches.
In the new South Africa archaic national legislation (the 1957 Witchcraft Suppression Act) [27] reminds us that Witchcraft is still considered a superstitious belief and that admitting to being a Witch, or to having knowledge of Witchcraft is a criminal offense, albeit one that is obviated by the existence of the Bill of Rights. [28]
Under the guiding example of Jacob Zuma, Julius Malema and others, the Bill of Rights has become a law daily circumvented through an appeal to a non-existent right to maintain and propagate cultural, religious and racial prejudice that is in
contradiction with the spirit and intent of the Bill.
ANC respondent A. appeared to take some pride in the fact that “real Witches” were not able to publicly admit to being Witches for fear of being murdered. One could read in to her comment either an implied threat or a sincere warning – in admitting that one is a Witch, one is automatically placing one’s life in danger. In effect, if your skin happens to be black and you admit to being a Witch, you have absolutely no right to defend your own right to religion, belief or conscience. You will not be afforded the apparent luxury of being presumed innocent until proven guilty of causing harm to the community in which you live. The cultural and religious bias against you is unequivocal and absolute. Cadre A. is an indifferent believer.
ANC respondent B. takes a more measured approach in expressing his own bias and eventual prejudice against Witchcraft and admits to being an indifferent skeptic. He deduces that there is a difference between African Witchcraft and European
Witchcraft which he then incorrectly identifies with Druidry. I will not examine the similarities and differences between Witchcraft and Druidry in this study as it is not relevant to the topic being examined. I must say that Witchcraft and Druidry are two very distinct and very diverse spiritualities despite their overt similarities and despite the fact that many Witches have evolved a syncretic approach to both religions. Both of these spiritualities are already well documented by better researchers and experienced practitioners. Witchcraft however is not Druidry any more than an Apple Tree is an Oak.
Respondent B. defines African Witchcraft as generally referring to “people who harm others using mysterious powers”. B’s statement is certainly confirmed by popular consent in both academic and religious circles. Within the context of South Africa, these so called mysterious powers are elevated in charismatic African Initiated Christian movements to demonic influences. [29]
As already demonstrated in A Pagan Witches TouchStone, accusations of alleged Witchcraft in Africa are not unlike those made against alleged Witches in Europe before the 17th century, despite having undergone unique cultural transformations and mutations.
B. candidly admits that he personally believes that African Witchcraft is nothing more than superstition and that “crimes against people called 'witches' have more to do with communal tensions that with any real 'witchcraft'.”
If one can assume that a far larger percentage of alleged Witches murdered in Britain, Europe and the Americas were actually innocent of the charges brought against them on the grounds that their confessions were extracted through severe torture [30], one can assume then that in Africa, most, if not all alleged child Witches in Malawi and Nigeria are simply normal children seeking nurture and nourishment in abnormal environments.
The findings of both the 1995 ‘Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft Violence and Ritual Murder in the Northern Province’ chaired by Professor N. V. Ralushai, and the Commission for Gender Equality's ‘National Conference on Witchcraft Violence’ in
Thohoyandou, Venda in 1998 lend credence to the suggestion that persons accused of bewitching others in South Africa are in almost all instances innocent of the allegations made against them, and that Witchcraft is a phenomenon closely associated with societal turmoil or unrest, in which the victims of Witch purging represent the scapegoats for that societal distress. [31]
But, where does this leave white-skinned African and European Witches in the African perspective?
All three respondents expressed the same conviction; Pagan Witches, like our allegedly non-existent African cousins, do not merit the same rights
afforded to Africans in general. Like the Thakathi / Baloyi of urban legend and the ex-ANC cadres of COPE, the white-skinned Witch must be reduced in credibility and dignity in order to serve the status quo.
As a nation we need values. The long-term impact of not having a value based society is that South Africans will be damned,” says Tutu. “If we do not have the right values of truth, honesty, love and compassion, then we are for the birds. Our nation will self-destruct.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
References:
[14] Castrate taxi drivers, says miniskirt protest
Published 4 March 2008
[15] Lesbians under attack
'Township lesbians too scared'
Published 23 April 2008
[16] Family burned to death in 'witchcraft' attack
Published 26 December 2008
[17] Ibid.
[18] Sexwale slams COPE for using 'witchcraft'
Published 24 January 2009
[19] COPE demand apology from Sexwale
Published 25 January 2009
[20] Study aims to eliminate witchcraft killings
Published 22 December 2003
[21] Witchcraft destroying the Catholic Church in Africa, experts say
Published 2 September 2007 - Catholic Information Service for Africa (www.cisanewsafrica.org)
[22] Bewitched or de-witched?
Published 20 July 2007
[23] Mpumalanga Witchcraft Suppression Bill (2007)
[24] Govt will 'fight' anti-Semitism
Published 29 January 2009
[25] African National Congress on Facebook
[26] South African Pagan Rights Alliance complaint against the ANC’s Tokyo Sexwale
ANC, COPE and Witchcraft
[27] Witchcraft Suppression Act No 3 of 1957
[28] Chapter Two (Bill of Rights) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa
[29] A Pagan Witches TouchStone: Witchcraft and Witch hunts in South Africa
[30] Europe’s Inner Demons
Norman Cohn - Paladin (1975)
[31] A Pagan Witches TouchStone: Witchcraft and Witch hunts in South Africa
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