In the last week of September, news broke that a 60-year-old woman was killed in her home in northern Ghana by a young male relative.
“All I know is that she is suspected of witchcraft,” said Zakari Iddi, the woman’s brother-in-law. he said Citi Newsroom.
The killing comes after recent efforts by Christian leaders and the Ghanaian government to protect the lives of those like the victim, often elderly men or women, who have been accused of witchcraft and then abused, exiled or killed.
This year the Parliament of Ghana passed a bill unanimously criminalizing all charges of witchcraft. The legislation threatens accusers with five years in prison and states that the accuser must also financially compensate the person they accuse (including legal fees and consultancy).
Account was introduced by MP Francis Xavier Sosu, who grew up seeing people – who he often thought were just struggling with mental illness – accused of witchcraft, beaten and assaulted.
“I remember it got to a point where I wasn’t too sure if the bill would pass or not, but I had to call people to go to prayer and raise some prayer altars,” Sosu said. “[Passing this bill is] an invasion of some demonic world using legislation, so it required prayers, intercession.’
“Lives are at risk”
In 2010, five men, including an evangelical pastor, burned an old woman accused of witchcraft. Despite widespread condemnation from outside the country and the Ghanaian government, the country has returned to “business as usual,” said John Azuma, founding executive director of the Sanneh Institute, an organization that studies religion in Africa.
In July 2020, a similar death it happened through lynching. In response, the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC) called for new laws on how to better care for the more than 2,000 widows who had been excommunicated for allegedly working with demons.
The Sanneh Institute filed a report the president and other top government officials to ban witch accusations, close “so-called witch camps” in the northern region, establish safe houses and establish a victim support fund. They also worked with other organizations as part of the Coalition Against Witchcraft Allegations (CAWA), an umbrella group which also entails Songtaba, Women International League for Peace and Freedom, ActionAid Ghana, Legal Resources Center and Amnesty International.
While many Christian leaders famous With the passage of the bill by parliament, senior pastors who run deliverance ministries expressed concern to Sosu that it may curtail their work as they have taught their junior pastors that they are allowed to make accusations of witchcraft if the name of the accused is not spoken aloud .
After the bill was passed in July, some pastors joined together to launch a campaign against it, Azumah said. But he does not see their opposition as threatening.
“We know the president will sign this bill in the blink of an eye because he supports it,” he said. “The speaker of parliament … is passionately opposed to this practice and wants the bill passed.”
However, despite high-level support, the bill has yet to be signed into law. According to Ghana’s constitution, bills passed by Parliament must be signed by the president within seven days, unless he refers the bill to the citizens’ advisory council for consideration and comment.
In this case, Sosu says the majority leader, who did not attend the vote, has delayed the bill because of amendments he is seeking to make – an intervention that Azumah called “very unusual”.
Since then, Parliament has been closed ever since.
CT contacted Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu as well as several of those opposed to the bill but have not been heard from by the press.
“Every day that this bill is delayed is a day that the torture of these women continues. Just last week another woman was killed.” he said Commissioner Joseph Whittal, Human Rights and Administrative Justice Committee, late September. He stressed how critical it was for the president to pass the bill “as soon as possible because lives are at stake.”
Deliverance from witches and demons
For much of African traditional beliefs and superstitions, Christians have often dealt with witchcraft through prayer meetings and deliverance sessions. (71 percent of Ghanaians recognize as Christians, and nearly a third are Pentecostals.)
Even today, more than 90 percent of Ghanaian Christians believe witchcraft is a problem in the country, and more than half have visited a Pentecostal prayer camp to seek deliverance from witches and demons, according to a study by former GPCC chairman Opoku Onyinah.
But when Protestant missionaries arrived in the 19th century, their theology often clashed with these notions, failing to recognize the importance of the supernatural in the African traditional worldview.
“Historical Mission Christianity generally rejects African traditional worldviews about the reality of demons and witchcraft as figments of people’s imaginations.” He wrote J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Ghanaian Pentecostal scholar. “Pentecostalism, on the other hand, provokes strong reactions in Africa because it affirms the ‘enchanted’ worldview of indigenous peoples by taking these views seriously and presenting an interventionist theology through which the fears and insecurities of African Christians are addressed.”
Prophetic and deliverance ministries seem to have found a middle ground between the worldviews of the indigenous people of Africa and the biblical stories of healing, deliverance and prophetic guidance, according to scholar and church leader Christian Tsekpoe. In this way, “perceived life-threatening fears could be addressed through prophetic utterances, healing, and exorcism,” He wrote.
Today in Africa, “successful Christian ministry (that is, ministry with significant personal relevance and impact) is impossible unless one takes into account the supernatural evil implied by the word ‘witchcraft,'” Asamoah-Gyadu He wrote. He believes that the growth of African Independent or Initiated Churches in the early 20th century corresponded to “the inability of Western missions to come to terms with the reality of supernatural evil, particularly witchcraft, and to formulate a Christian pastoral response to it.”
Nevertheless, Chekpoe said that Pentecostal churches face a major challenge: the misuse of prophetic ministries and deliverance ministries. He believes that “charlatans” and “unemployed people who have a strong personality” can “easily claim spiritual meetings and take advantage of innocent people.”
What would Christ do?
Although witchcraft connotes the cosmic forces of good and evil, the categories can often be invoked for both worldly and personal reasons. Azumah says that as women have begun to become more financially independent, men who have felt threatened or scorned are increasingly accusing women of witchcraft.
It’s “an age-old conspiracy to keep women in their ‘place,'” she continued. Instead, he has observed that when men are accused of witchcraft, it is often rationalized that they are using it for “good” purposes. She believes this thinking is a “very disturbing, gender-based, misogynistic mindset” that Ghanaians should challenge.
Witchcraft accusations are a widespread issue in Ghana, but are more likely to affect the northern part of the country, including the Dagomba and Konkomba communities, which suffer from poverty, underdevelopment and a lack of education. The region is also home to many families who practice polygamy, creating situations that can breed jealousy and strife between spouses.
“If you have two wives, or three wives, or four wives, and the children of one wife are doing well and the children of the other are not doing well, the other women will [accuse her of using] magic to steal their children’s fortunes and wisdom and give [them] to her children”.
But even if an accusation begins as a result of a dispute between family or friends, the parties may then end up consulting deliverance ministries, where violence and dehumanizing treatment may be involved.
“What I’m against and what I’m against is going out there to accuse people and malign people and damage their reputations … which can even cause them harm or murders,” Azumah said. “If you really believe that there are witches hunting you, as a good Christian, you should take it up in prayer and you should deal with it in the context of spiritual warfare.”
The role of the local pastor is to care for people who are victims of the devil’s oppression, he adds.
Sosu, who has worked with deliverance ministries in the past, similarly says that instead of accusing someone of being a witch, Christians who fear being hunted by a witch should fast and pray. As for Christian leaders, they should follow the example of Jesus, who cast out demons but did so without accusing the person.
A final important element is the individual’s own relationship with God.
“The power in the disposition of the believer, which makes him a child of God, must be the focus and not the power of magic.” He wrote Ghanaian Pentecostal leader Kwasi Atta Agyapong “What emerges clearly from the ministry of those who subscribe to the excesses of witchcraft beliefs is ignorance of their identity in Christ.”