Witchcraft Allegationss

Witchcraft allegations illustrated by different cases

The documentary takes into consideration various cases, but when looking closely at each of them, one can conclude that the reasons for witchcraft accusations are mostly identical and only based on wild, unproven allegations. Ma Hawa, who has been a resident in the camp for more than twenty years, owed her fate to a young boy who was not able to sleep one night and accused her of bewitching him. Subsequently, she was banished from her home and found refuge in the camp (Witches of Gambaga (time). Salmata, another resident, was held responsible for the illness and death of a rival’s child and, consequently, was being brought to the camp together with her daughter (Witches of Gambaga (time).

Once a woman or girl is believed to be a witch, she is persecuted in order to preserve the safety and purity of the community. Poor health, an accident, loss of jobs or properties - “when people do not have a rational explanation for this they tend to use the supernatural to show that someone somewhere is responsible for this misfortune and to find a way of removing this person so they are no longer able to harm them”, explains Dzodzi Tsikata, a Professor in the University of Ghana’s Department of Development Sociology (Obuoibi). He also states that, in most religions, people believe in good and evil and that the main issue is “how people respond to this belief in witchcraft” (SOURCE). According to the documentary, people in certain areas believe that a god protects their town and in order to preserve this protection, they need to reduce the potency of witches (Witches of

Simon Ngota, the team leader of the “Go Home” project, which helps women on their way back to normal civilization, states that men indeed can also be wizards. However, men are believed to use their supernatural power in a positive manner, in order to protect their families and houses, whereas women, often called the “servants of the Devil” (Guiley S. 139), are supposed to use it only to destroy lives (Witches of Gambaga (10:00)). In order to understand the reasons behind this way of thinking, Yaba Badoe, the film’s producer and narrator, asks a question, which encapsulates the documentary’s issue: “{what} If witchcraft traditions are so deeply entrenched, that to be born a woman is to be born under a shadow of suspicion?” (Witches of Gambaga ….). According to Sokari Ekine, a Nigerian social justice activist and blogger, one has to scrutinize the factors behind WHAT?, namely, on the one hand the “rise and powers of Pentecostal churches and Muslim marabouts in Ghana” and on the other hand “the use of traditional and spiritual practices for explanations around the failure of nation states to address poverty and lack of socio-economic responsibility by governments” (SOURCE).