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Witch killings among the Sukuma
2008-02-03 10:58:33
By Simeon Mesaki
Witchcraft is intrinsic to the Sukuma system of belief and way of life. It is rooted in their whole system of knowledge and morality.
The Sukuma recognise various types of witchcraft, which are always thought of as deliberately planned.
The most prevalent and most feared form involves the insertion of poison, i.e. harmful medicines (bulisiwa) into food and drink as DR. Simeon Mesaki explains
Bupandya` is another notorious variety of witchcraft, which involves placing harmful substances where an intended victim will come into contact with, road or paths.
It is believed that the poison will affect only the intended victim.
In a third form, nhamanhama, it is believed that the witch makes himself/herself invisible and beats the victim with a stick dipped in poison or blows poison through a straw into the victim`s face.
Witches are also said to send agents such as hyenas, snakes and swarms of flies, against an enemy as couriers of evil, and some are believed to be capable of transforming their victims into zombies (ng’witunga) who are brought out to work for them at night.
Witchcraft in Sukumaland may be held responsible for almost any calamity or misfortune such as sudden storms on the lake, the sudden death of a healthy person, miscarriages and infertility, the failure of rain, death from snake bite, losing one’s way, and various diseases.
RESEARCH
Ralph Tanner who did research among the Sukuma in the 1960s, writes that witchcraft beliefs (bulogi) are prevalent in every Sukuma community, constituting a living reality for the people rather than an abstract idea.
Referring to the situation in the late 1990s, K. Kibuga (1999) asserts that witchcraft, ``…is a belief which many people in the rural areas of Sukumaland hold whether they are educated or not, whether they are rich or poor, young or old, and whether they are members of a modern religion or not``.
According to Hans Cory, a colonial anthropologist traditionally the Sukuma had three main ways of dealing with witchcraft.
First, the neighbourhood council of elders (banamhala) castigated, chastised and warned alleged witches.
Another method of dealing with witches was ostracising, entailing the denial of essential services in the village to the culprits.
The more serious cases were referred to the court of the ntemi (chief) and his assessors (banang’oma), a court powerful enough to sentence a witch to death if the evidence was conclusive.
PUNISHMENT
But cases leading to capital punishment were very rare. The historian John Iliffe notes how the Germans (1885-1914) are remembered for their ruthless actions against those who claimed to identify witches, in some cases hanging the culprits. The British, who ruled Tanganyika between 1919 and 1961 enacted legislation to control witchcraft for the whole territory1.
With regard to the Sukuma, their customary law was formally recorded by a government sociologist and translated into Kiswahili and copies deposited with every court in the area.
But strangely it made no mention at all of witchcraft. He adds that, ``…there is no evidence that this book was ever referred to by any court magistrate…``(Tanner, 1970:23):.
Soon after independence (1963), the new government transformed traditional leadership in the country, replacing traditional chiefs with a hierarchical system of appointed functionaries in charge of administration.
According to Tanner, this process left something of a vacuum with regard to witchcraft beliefs and anxieties.
He argued that in the postcolonial era the ordinary man in trouble was bound to consider using self-help if he possibly could rather than depending on the agencies of government.
COMPLEXITY
The northern regions of Mwanza and Shinyanga of Tanzania are inhabited predominately by the Sukuma people. Since the 1960s the phenomenon of killing alleged witches has gripped the area to the extent that witch killings have become the order of the day.
The phenomenon is complex, perplexing and intriguing. It has baffled the state for decades despite a number of interventions and commissions of inquiry.
In spite of the government`s attempt to come to grips with the problem the witchcraft-associated murders of older people, particularly women, continues relentlessly as the scourge continue to threaten social stability throughout Sukumaland, creating a climate of fear and uncertainty.
In fact even in such cases when victims escape death, they are forced to run away from their homes to save their lives. The problem has become so serious that old women in the Sukuma countryside are “becoming an endangered species,`` a view once expressed by the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA).
The iniquitous practice of killing suspected witches in Sukumaland, became gradually noticeable in the early 1960s. By the mid-1970s these murders had become so notorious that the government recognized the necessity to deal with the problem.
OPERATION
Thus in 1976 it embarked on what came to be known as Operesheni Mauaji in Kiswahili (Operation against killings) a state-driven crackdown on suspected perpetrators of the dreadful phenomenon.
The operation turned out to be an embarrassing episode for the government when a number of apprehended suspects died while in police custody.
As a result some police and security officers were convicted and jailed for mishandling the operation, and even some cabinet ministers bore political responsibility for the mishap and had to resign.
Consequently the operation was abandoned whereupon the killings resumed and continued to such an extent that, by the late 1980s, the situation seemed to get out of hand. Later on the Mongela Commission was formed in 1988 by the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), to investigate.
ASTOUNDING
The commission came out with some startling results showing that between 1970 and 1984, 3693 people, 1407 men and 2286 women were killed for witchcraft related incidents in the whole of Tanzania. Out of these, 2347 (63.5%) deaths occurred in the regions of Mwanza, Shinyanga and Tabora.
There are no reliable figures on the killings for the period between 1984 and 1993, but in recent years the two regions of Mwanza and Shinyanga have continued to hold the unenviable position of leading in witch-related murders that are on the increase.
Thus a front-page story of one of the daily papers in the late 1990s read, ``20 women murdered monthly in grisly Shinyanga witch hunt”( Daily Mail, September 30, 1998).
In another story it is claimed that as many as 100 elderly women were being killed for witchcraft beliefs every year in Shinyanga region (Mtanzania June 1, 1999).
Another newspaper, Mzalendo 4th October 1998, reported that between 1996 and 1998, a total of 325 people were killed in Shinyanga region and quoted figures for each year.
Thus in 1996 133 people were killed and in 1997 102 were killed, and between January and October 1998, 90 were killed (Mzalendo October 4, 1998 p. 5).
Furthermore, a survey conducted by TAMWA revealed that between 1993 and 1998, 318 elderly people were killed in Mwanza region alone (Daily News March 11, 1999).
It is to be noted that these figures are hardly exhaustive; they represent only the cases brought to the attention of the police force.
Many other innocent people are murdered each year in remote villages of the Sukuma countryside and according to an official of the police department in Shinyanga Region, the killings had become very common, occurring literally on a daily basis in the regions of Shinyanga and Mwanza.
Next week we shall look more closely to this criminal carnage, its salient features, possible causes and the apparent failure of the government to control the situation, much as it would have liked to.
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