Perspectives on African Witchcraft

Mariano Pavanello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315439907
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume draws on a range of ethnographic and historical material to provide insight into witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters explore a variety of cultural contexts, with contributions focusing on Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia and Eritrean diaspora. The book considers the concept of witchcraft itself, the interrelations with religion and medicine, and the theoretical frameworks employed to explain the nature of modern African witchcraft representations.

1 Agencies, jurisdictions and paradigms in the shaping of witchcraft

Mariano Pavanello

A paradigm of power in West Africa

João de Barros, author of the sixteenth-century chronicle Asia, reports that when Diogo Cão came back from the Congo in 1486,¹ the king of Benin addressed a request to the king of Portugal, João II, asking for “sacerdotes pera o doctrinarem em Fé”.² Although we know that Portuguese missionaries had been active on the Guinea Coast since the early explorations,³ sources do not report any reply from the Portuguese king, and we do not know whether the king of Benin was eventually catechized and baptized. It is surprising that the Portuguese, who, since the same year 1486, had been fully developing their relations with the Courts of the Congo and immediately satisfying their desire to convert to Christianity,⁴ were, on the contrary, refraining from involving themselves with the king of Benin, whose kingdom was closer to the coast of Mina (the Gold Coast). It appears that doubts were raised about the reason for his request, and the chronicler suspects that the man had a keen desire to overwhelm his antagonists on the coast.⁵ Were the Portuguese aware that conversion to Christianity might have an ulterior motive, and that the king of Benin was perhaps looking for a supernatural support stronger than that offered by his traditional deities? Were they combining political reasons with religious scruples in keeping that king on the edge of Christianity in order to protect their commercial allies on the coast of Mina? Anyhow, the Portuguese were aware that Christian faith was seen by the natives as a means of establishing an alliance with the Europeans, and as an instrument – reputed to be much stronger than their traditional cults – to achieve or consolidate political power. Should we suspect that the Portuguese were to some extent sharing the same ideology professed by their African interlocutors, i.e. an ideology that makes people convinced that success, either individual or collective, like military advance and destruction of adversaries, is a sign of celestial favor or even of predestination depending upon the will of superior nonhuman entities? The same ideology makes it possible to manipulate this superior will through some spiritual force, either possessed by some human agents or granted by more powerful entities.

In order to outline the ideology that Africans were most probably sharing with their European counterparts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, despite striking differences in cultural and religious traditions, let’s analyze the biographies of two key figures of West African history: Sunjata Keïta,⁶ the legendary founder of the empire of Mali (first half of the thirteenth century),⁷ and Osei Tutu,⁸ the founder of the Asante empire who lived four centuries later (seventeenth-eighteenth century).⁹ From these two biographies we can distill a paradigm of power in which the hero protagonist is a predestined man to whom military and political supremacy is granted because of his superior spiritual power and miraculous physical excellence. The life-cycle of both heroes has four phases: childhood, exile, victorious return, and glorious reign. Despite the distance in time and space, and the difference in the form in which the two stories have been transmitted (epic song the first, historical tales the second), the biographical pattern is almost identical, showing the persistence of an ideological complex characterizing West Africa.

Nehemia Levtzion summarizes Sunjata’s biography as follows:

At the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Malinke were subjugated by Sumanguru, the powerful king of Soso. The Malinke war of independence was led by the great hero Sunjata […]. The epic of Sunjata forms a pivot in the historical traditions of the Malinke. He was born crippled and his mother suffered much humiliation from her rival-wife, whose son Dankaran-Tuma grew into a handsome and able boy. When Nare-Maghan died, his son Dankaran-Tuma succeeded him. Then, by a miracle and with the help of the chief blacksmith, Sunjata stood up on his once-feeble legs, and became a great hunter and warrior.

(Levtzion 1973, p. 58)

The oral epic sings that Sunjata was the sickly and crippled son of Sogolon, the ugly “buffalo woman before whom powerless sorcerers shrank in fear”,¹⁰ wife of the handsome Maghan Konaté, king of Niani. When this latter died, the woman was exiled with her children because a conspiracy brought to the throne Dankaran-Tuma, a physically perfect son of another wife of the dead king, instead of Sunjata, whom the prophecy of the hunters¹¹ had announced as the future emperor. The hero then wandered through various Malinke Courts where the chiefs did not give him hospitality, fearing the vengeance of Dankaran-Tuma. Therefore, Sunjata abandoned the Malinke country and sought refuge at the court of the king of Mema, Musa Tunkara, in the Soninke country. There, Sunjata – who had miraculously recovered from his sickness and physical disability – was welcomed and became a strong warrior and captain of the army. During that time, the Malinke fell under the tyranny of Sumanguru, who defeated and killed Dankaran-Tuma. Ambassadors were then sent to look for Sunjata and call him back to rescue his people. Sunjata left Mema with a huge military force provided by the king, made up of infantry and cavalry. In a series of battles against the army of Sumanguru, Sunjata, with the help of his griot,¹² Bala Fasseké, triumphed over his enemies. The final battle was fought at Krina beside the river Niger, south of Beledugu. The epic song describes this battle as the confrontation of two powerful magicians, Sumanguru and Sunjata. The latter got the final victory by injecting Sumanguru’s body with a white cock’s nail, a poison that the victim himself had prepared for his sorceries and that Sunjata had miraculously stolen. Later on, Sunjata defeated Sumanguru’s allies and conquered the whole wide land where the tree of so grows.¹³ All the Malinke chiefs, at the end of the war, gathered at Kangaba and swore allegiance to Sunjata.¹⁴

Osei Tutu was the uterine nephew and heir¹⁵ of the chief of Kwaman (later Kumasi), Obi Yeboa. As with many other partly historical and partly legendary figures, the glory of Osei Tutu was foretold by a miraculous event concerning his birth. An oral tradition has it that Obi Yeboa appealed to a powerful and very famous shrine¹⁶ called Otutu in the land of the Akuapem, “which was then under the powerful Akwamu state” (on the coast, close to the mouth of the river Volta), to obtain a boon that his one uterine niece, the barren Manuh Kotosii, could beget a child. Manuh then gave birth to Osei, and the child was named Tutu after the shrine.¹⁷ Osei Tutu grew up, and when he reached the proper age was sent as a pawn to the Court of Denkyira – to which Kumasi was tributary – where the boy learned many important military techniques. Later, he was obliged to escape to Akwamu, the traditional enemy of Denkyira, because of adultery committed with Akobena Bensua, a sister of the Denkyirahene¹⁸ and wife of a high dignitary. “When it was discovered that the Denkyira princess was pregnant, he took refuge in Akwamu where Ansa Sasraku, the Akwamuhene, became his friend because of Osei’s personal beauty.”¹⁹ Oral traditions describe Osei Tutu as a very handsome boy, and Agyeman Prempeh writes that the Akwamuhene, Ansa Sasraku, fell in love with him and took Osei Tutu as his “manly wife”.²⁰ In the Akwamu Court, the friendship between Osei Tutu and Kwame Frimpon Anɔkyie, known as Ɔkɔmfo Anɔkye,²¹ also began. The two became inseparable when the former was called back to Kumase on his uncle’s death.²² Osei Tutu improved his military knowledge and skills in Akwamu, and the hero left with a powerful army provided by the Akwamuhene. Protected by the spiritual power of Ɔkɔmfo Anɔkye, the Asante prince adopted a military organization that he had learned at Denkyira. Among the miraculous actions performed by Ɔkɔmfo Anɔkye, oral sources mention some sorcery that favored the military victories of Osei Tutu, who eventually defeated and subjugated Denkyira, and the descent from the sky of the Golden Stool, the symbol of the Asante nation.

Similarities between the two biographies are surprising and are not limited to the narrative structure but include other more substantial aspects, like the presence of a deuteragonist beside the hero protagonist. In the Manding epic, the King Maghan Konaté had offered his son Sunjata the service of the magician-griot Bala Fasseké,²³ “who was also well versed in sorcery”.²⁴ Osei Tutu had by his side a prophet-magician, on whom oral traditions confer the character of a cultural hero, a sort of a double of his king, thus creating a dyad founder of the state, its laws and customs.²⁵ These deuteragonists have an exceptional importance in the biographies of the kings, which were entrusted to their care. Bala Fasseké protected Sunjata, helped him to defeat the magic power of Sumanguru, inspired his actions and transmitted them to the future for eternal memory. “Oh, son of Sogolon, I am the word and you are the deed, now your destiny begins”;²⁶ with these words the griot greeted Sunjata when they met again after the exile and before the final battle. In the Asante history, Ɔkɔmfo Anɔkyie, through his spiritual power, was the true creator of Osei Tutu’s might, and, like the Malian griot, was also responsible for most of the construction of his biography.

Three crucial interconnected elements give these stories their genuine significance: first, the utmost importance given by humans to physical excellence (a perfect state of health, and the attractive appearance of the body); second, the faith in superior nonhuman entities who can interfere in human events, and can change the lives and destinies of people; third, the belief in a spiritual power and knowledge possessed by some humans that can interact with the nonhuman entities for the control of people and things. Sunjata was born crippled, and the spiritual power of a chief blacksmith gifted him with a perfect physical state. Osei Tutu was an extraordinarily handsome man. Both heroes grew up as skillful warriors. Their births were announced by extraordinary events: Sunjata was prophesized by the hunters and was the son of a woman who was feared by the sorcerers. Osei Tutu’s mother, the barren Manuh, became pregnant after the intervention of a powerful shrine. Both army leaders had by their side a companion gifted with superior knowledge and the power of sorcery. Sunjata, who was himself a sorcerer,²⁷ had his griot who shared the same power with his master. Osei Tutu, who was not gifted with the power of sorcery, had his Ɔkɔmfo, who was a powerful witch. The spiritual power (=witchcraft) with which the companions of the two heroes were gifted was used against their rivals, who were ruinously defeated and lost their lives. The structural balance within and between the two couples and the structural correspondence between the two stories are the clue for grasping the paradigmatic value of the two historical figures. Both heroes, Sunjata and Osei Tutu, represent the power over people and things that can be achieved only through the combination of three qualities: a superior physical state, superior knowledge and spiritual power, the favor of superior nonhuman entities.

The glorification of power in sixteenth-century Europe

An ideology of power similar to that we can distill from these stories was certainly shared by the ruling classes in Western Europe. Since the time of the conquest of Ceuta (1415) and the explorations launched by Prince Henry the Navigator (b. 1394 – d. 1460), the Portuguese had celebrated the physical superiority, boldness and skill of their leaders and sailors, combining these features with...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Agencies, jurisdictions and paradigms in the shaping of witchcraft
• 2 Witchcraft, medicine and British colonial rule: Anthropological analysis of colonial documents in the Gold Coast
• 3 Witchcraft and dream: A discussion of the Akan case
• 4 Witchcraft and religion in the process of formation of the public space in Ghana
• 5 Where Christianity is ancient: Pentecostalism, evil in the world and the break with the past in Ethiopia
• 6 “Be Yesus Sh’m”: Breaking with the national past in Eritrean and Ethiopian Pentecostal churches in Rome
• 7 “I went out into the street … and now I am fighting for my life.”: Street children, witchcraft accusations, and the collapse of the household in Bangui (Central African Republic)
• 8 Fields of experience: In between healing and harming. On conversation between Dogon healers and sorcerers
• Index