Pentecostalism, Witchdemonic Accusations, And Symbolic Violence In Ghana

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Pentecostalism, Witchdemonic Accusations, and Symbolic Violence in Ghana Some Human Rights Concerns

Seth Tweneboah

Department of Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

ktsethgh@yahoo.com

Abstract

The increasing numerical strength of Ghanaian pentecostalism and the movement’s involvement in filling in the socioeconomic vacuum in society means that the position of the pastor-prophet cannot be a neglected one. Yet, the extent to which human rights violations are involved in the activities of some of these pastor-prophets has raised some concerns. This article will focus on the often violent treatment of alleged witches during exorcism and explore how these challenge human rights development and implementation in Ghana. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and symbolic violence will be applied to a discussion of human rights and Ghanaian popular deliverance-oriented pentecostal/charismatic ministries. I will argue that pentecostal/charismatic discourse on witchcraft fashions an ideological foundation for symbolic and actual violence against those accused of witchcraft.

Keywords

Pentecostalism – witch accusations – human rights – symbolic violence – pastor- prophets

Introduction

People accused of witchcraft have historically undergone different forms of ordeal. In Africa, especially in the precolonial era, such suspected witches were either banished from the community or sold into slavery. Others were made to

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-03703003

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undergo ritual cleansing at shrines that specialized in dealing with witchcraft activities.1European colonizers and missionaries decided to enact laws meant to prohibit the authority of the traditional shrines and native courts that dealt with these cases.2Yet, this did not make a strong impact on the society. Belief in witchcraft accusations, indeed, adapted itself to the contingencies that resulted from the changing socioeconomic situation of the time.3

In this article I claim that neo-prophetic pentecostal/charismatic (pente- costal from now on) discourse on witchcraft creates an ambivalent tension in the society. Pastor-prophets, I argue, provide an alternative means of reducing the effects of belief in witchcraft. At the same time, their discourse and mode of exorcism perpetuate witchcraft hysteria and persecution in Ghanaian society. I interrogate the tension between this group and traditional belief in witchcraft, on the one hand, and the challenges this tension presents to human rights implementation and religious pluralism, on the other.

To be able to analyze this, I employ Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and symbolic violence. I demonstrate how the religious landscape, what Bourdieu refers to as the field, is contested through Bourdieuianhabitusandcultural capital, two most important ideological constructs that, in turn, promote symbolic violence in society. I seek, first, to contribute to the ongoing academic debate on reli- gious tensions in multireligious and plural legal societies of Africa as well as to practical policymaking, and, second, to call for a pragmatic approach to dealing with issues of victimization, stigmatization, and abuses of the rights of alleged witchdemonic4 victims. While acknowledging the occasional responses by

1 Jane Parish, “Antiwitchcraft Shrines among the Akan: Possession and the Gathering of Knowl-

edge,”African Studies Review46, no. 3 (December 2003): 17–34. See also T.C. McCaskie, “Anti-

Witchcraft Cults in Asante: An Essay in the Social History of an African People,”History in

Africa8 (1981): 125–154, and Jane Parish, “The Dynamics of Witchcraft and Indigenous Shrines

among the Akan,”Africa69, no. 3 (1999): 426–448.

2 Natasha Gray, “Independent Spirits: The Politics of Policing Anti-Witchcraft Movements in

Colonial Ghana, 1908–1927,” Journal of Religion in Africa35, no. 2 (May 2005): 139–158. 3 In her Search for Security, M.J. Field, for example, gives a detailed account of how the rapid

socioeconomic changes of the early 1930s with its attending results, such as stress and depres-

sion, brought about increased belief in witchcraft accusations and how these were dealt with

in the shrines that sprang up in those days. See M.J. Field, Search For Security: An Ethno-

Psychiatric Study Of Rural Ghana(W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1970).

4 I have borrowed this concept from Opoku Onyinah, who used it in his 2004 article on

witchcraft and demons in Ghanaian pentecostalist discourse. See Opoku Onyinah, “Contem-

porary ‘Witchdemonology’ in Africa,”International Review of Mission93, no. 370–371 (October

2004): 327–542.

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state and nonstate actors such as the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Pro- tection, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (chraj), Human Rights Watch, and other human rights organizations, I contend that as signatory to the un convention against torture and other equally impor- tant international human rights documents, the nation of Ghana must go beyond promises and demonstrate commitment to protecting and promoting the rights of powerless victims in its society.

It is important, however, to admit that exorcism or deliverance has consti- tuted a significant mode of filling in the vacuum created by socioeconomic dysfunction. People rely on the power of pastor-prophets who have been instru- mental in providing the comfort and assurance needed to overcome economic uncertainties in society. Historically, while the mainline Christian churches admit the reality of evil forces of nature, they reified belief in witches and demons, describing it as irrational superstitions to be left behind by converts or, at least, to be overcome through education. The popularity of pentecostalism, however, stems from the fact that it takes seriously popular views about spirits. This article will not examine the validity of the concept of exorcism/deliver- ance as practiced in pentecostalism; it will not make a comparative analysis between exorcism in pentecostalism and exorcism in other traditions. Rather, what I seek to explore here are the excesses and cases of violations in the pen- tecostal practice of deliverance/exorcism that involve human rights and under- mine religious pluralism.

Rosalind Hackett’s “Discourses of Demonization in Africa and Beyond” has provided a framework for understanding the tension that emanates from “vio- lent condemnations of other (competing) religious options, in particular, tradi- tional African religions.”5 Opoku Onyinah’s “Contemporary ‘Witchdemonolo- gy’ in Africa” further strengthens an understanding of the role of deliverance and exorcism in dealing with the tension between the traditional African reli- gious beliefs and the Christian faith.6

5 Rosalind I.J. Hackett, “Discourses of Demonization in Africa and Beyond,”Diogenes 50, no. 3

(2003): 61–75.

6 Onyinah, “Contemporary ‘Witchdemonology’ in Africa.” Opoku Onyinah, Pentecostal Exor-

cism: Witchcraft and Demonology in Ghana(Blandford Forum,uk: Deo Publishers, 2012).

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Understanding the Terms and the Argument

In this article I use “human rights” to mean those rights “everybody should have by virtue of his or her very humanity.”7 These rights are inviolable and inalienable and must be recognized and enforced by all. The basis of their recognition and enforceability, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (udhr) asserts, is our common humanity. The term indeed refers to an ideal of social order in which citizens have “social guarantees against certain abusive forms of behaviour.”8

In his theory of practice, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu discusses the predominant nature of conflict and class-based group disparity in society. He identifieshabitusas the “basis of perception and appreciation of all subsequent experiences.”9 Such habitus predisposes an individual to react to stimuli, or what he refers to as “structures” that are “constitutive of a particular type of environment.”10 My focus will be on religious habitus, which denotes the reli- gious dimension of an “individual agent’s habitus.” Bourdieu describes religious habitus as the “principle generator of all thoughts, perceptions and actions con- sistent with the norms of a religious representation of the natural and super- natural worlds”11 and the “lasting generalized and transposable disposition to act and think in conformity with the principles of a (quasi) systematic view of the world and human existence.”12Religious habitus manifests in the “religious field,”whichinthecontextofthis articlereferstothesharedspacewithin which Ghana’s religious structures operate. Taking both of these definitions—habitus and religious habitus—into consideration, it becomes clear that an individ- ual’s interpretations of and responses to religious symbols, narratives, actions, and other forms of meaning have more to do with the “embodied sense” that

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R. John Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 111.

Saladin Meckled-García and Başak Cali, eds., The Legalization of Human Rights: Multidis- ciplinary Perspectives on Human Rights and Human Rights Laws (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 1.

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 78.

Bourdieu,Outline of a Theory of Practice, 72.

Pierre Bourdieu, “Genèse et Structure du Champ Religieux,”Revue française de Sociologie 12, no. 3 (1971): 295–334 at 319.

Pierre Bourdieu, “Legitimation and Structured Interest in Weber’s Sociology of Religion,” in Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity, ed. Sam Whimster and Scott Lash, trans. Chris Turner (Oxford: Routledge, 1987), 216.

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inclines him or her toward a particular religious choice than with any form of rational calculation.

I suggest here that in Ghanaian religious fields, pentecostalism has the most dominant influence on religious habitus. Not only are there more pentecostal worshippers, but its discourse is pervasive, successfully wrapping around all dimensions of Ghanaian life, from politics to popular culture. Pentecostal dis- course has become a crucial lens through which many people engage reality in Ghana.13 Admittedly, Bourdieu’s concept is used here as only one of the many ways in which religion (in this context, pentecostalism) has been implicated as a causal agent for the abuse of the rights of persons suspected or accused of being witches in society.

The article also takes into account the complexities and the multisided nature of the concept of pentecostalism and the numerous controversies re- garding the typologies of this phenomenon.14While I use the generic termpen- tecostalism, the focus will be on neo-prophetism, a strand that Cephas Omenyo has defined as those “that combine features that are akin to the aics and some features of Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches.”15 I discuss the ten- sion between neo-prophetism (to be used interchangeably with pentecostal- ism) and traditional African religious beliefs and the challenge this presents to human rights implementation in Ghana. It must be admitted that most of the abuses discussed here occur outside the public view. That aside, attempt has been made to rely on a review of existing literature, interviews, and media reports to make sense of this trend. Even where some of the media reports are merely journalistic, they are, however, a most useful tool for reference with regard to the issues I discuss. As Atiemo Abamfo has noted, evidence of human rights discourse must not necessarily depend on “the classic ones stated in offi- cial documents, or even of scholars; but the views, attitudes and practices,”16 including perceptions as expressed in concrete daily situations of the society. It is equally fair to admit that the observations and the claims made in this

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Birgit Meyer, “Pentecostalism, Prosperity and Popular Cinema in Ghana,” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal3, no. 1 (2002): 67–87.

Allan Anderson, “Varieties, Taxonomies, and Definitions,” in Studying Global Pentecostal- ism: Theories and Methods, ed. Allan Anderson et al. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2010), 13–29.

Cephas N. Omenyo, “A Comparative Analysis of the Development Intervention of Protes- tant and Charismatic/Pentecostal Organisations in Ghana,”Swedish Missiological Themes 94, no. 1 (2004): 5–22.

Abamfo Ofori Atiemo, Religion and Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 8.

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article are exceptions rather than representative. These issues have attracted interest because they serve as a huge challenge to Ghanaian pentecostalism in general.

Pentecostalism and Economic Failures

Many scholarly works have shown a strong link between economic breakdown and reliance on religious beliefs. The common theme running through these writings is that the discourse of witchcraft became intensified particularly in periods when the pursuit of individual economic interests became prominent in the traditional society. T.S. McCaskie, for example, notes that during the colonial period this pursuit became both a threat and an opportunity for most people in Asante society.17 The period of economic individualism, he says, weakened the control and influence of the traditional state over the individual. The period witnessed both economic success and social insecurity and uncertainty. This led to the rise of the lucrative business of anti-witchcraft shrines that specialized in protecting people from witches.

Natasha Gray also recounts how this “spiritual marketplace” became so com- petitive that the religious specialists involved in it abused their powers and influence18and argues that the colonial government made laws aimed at check- ing the excesses of this practice.19 Early missionaries banned members from consulting anti-witchcraft shrines. Despite these efforts, they had no significant impact on preventing the local people from consulting these shrines, nor was witchcraft given much attention in the missionary training programs. While the missionary churches had rituals for exorcising witches, there were none for protecting against witches, and leadership training largely ignored this existen- tial need of African society.20

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T.C. McCaskie, “Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante.”

Natasha Gray, “Witches, Oracles, and Colonial Law: Evolving Anti-Witchcraft Practices in Ghana, 1927–1932,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 34, no. 2 (2001): 339–363.

Gray, “Independent Spirits: The Politics of Policing Anti-Witchcraft Movements in Colo- nial Ghana, 1908–1927.”

Elias K. Bongmba, “Witchcraft and the Christian Church: Ethical Implications,” in Imag- ining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa, ed. Gerrie ter Haar, Religion in Contemporary Africa Series (Trenton, nj and Asmara: African World Press, 2007), 120.

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The continued socioeconomic failures and the inability of postcolonial lead- ers to deliver development also provide a context conducive to witchcraft dis- course.21 According to Sasha Newell, the success of pentecostalism in Ivory Coast, for example, is partly due to the fact that its activities and discourse on witchcraft were in tune with “pre-existing religious beliefs about efficacy against witchcraft and access to prosperity,”22a gap that the mainline churches failed to fill. In the context of Cameroon, Peter Geschiere has noted how the pentecostal ability to counter the effects of witchcraft provides a fertile ground for the movement to flourish.23 Some scholars have argued that early pente- costal involvement in social services was mainly passive. Most of their activities had hitherto focused on sacred/spiritual matters. Very little if any emphasis was placed on social services, mainly because, as Omenyo observes, “they have gen- erally been perceived as an experiential movement.”24 Yet, in the context of socioeconomic disenchantment, the role of pentecostals in the society cannot be underestimated.

The tension between individual desire, family responsibility, and the pente- costal discourse on the demonization of certain forms of riches has been well noted in previous studies.25The prosperity gospel becomes particularly impor- tant in addressing the challenges that modernity, capitalism, and inequality bring in the society. Jane Parish has equally assessed the tension between modernity and tradition in the light of personal reflexivity and conspicuous consumption, and how witchcraft is implicated in this tension. She demon- strates how the phenomenon of witchcraft becomes an ambivalent challenge to pentecostalism in Ghana.26

The teaching on witchcraft gives meaning and fulfilment in society. As Ne- well observes, the discourse on witchcraft not only produces a channel for

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Andrew Apter, “Atinga Revisited: Yoruba Witchcraft and the Cocoa Economy, 1950–1951,” in Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, eds.,Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 124.

Sasha Newell, “Pentecostal Witchcraft: Neoliberal Possession and Demonic Discourse in Ivorian Pentecostal Churches,” Journal of Religion in Africa37, no. 4 (2007): 461–490 at 472. Peter Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 205.

Cephas N. Omenyo, “A Comparative Analysis of the Development Intervention of Protes- tant and Charismatic/Pentecostal Organisations in Ghana,”Swedish Missiological Themes 91, no. 1 (2006), 16.

Birgit Meyer, “‘Delivered from the Powers of Darkness’: Confessions of Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 65, no. 2 (1995): 236–255.

Parish, “The Dynamics of Witchcraft and Indigenous Shrines among the Akan,” 428.

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accessing the benefits of modernization, but it also serves “as conservative reac- tion against the evils of modernity.”27 It does so, he said, by suggesting that conversion will lead to economic success and its attending “glitzy new worth” will be an indication of God’s favor upon one’s life.28 This makes sense in the Ghanaian context. The individual has been described as homo religiosus pos- sessing an irresistible “religious ontology and epistemology,”29 and so linking his or her economic life with the belief system will not be out of place. At the same time, in a society in which many people are disenchanted with socioeco- nomic realities, it is also understandable that many believers have relied on the pastor-prophet to fill in this gap.30 Pentecostal discourse on witchcraft, there- fore, provides the means through which disenchanted individuals, especially the youth, find meaning in the society. The question that can be posed is: Will a revived economy then lead to the diminishing reliance on the pastor-prophet? As new strands emerge during different times in economic and political his- tory, this will then largely depend, among other indicators, on pentecostalism’s ability to produce other strands capable of facing the newer challenges of the time. Evidence of this is expressed in the shifting focus and active involvement in social and political interventions in recent times.31

Notions of Witchcraft

The belief in witchcraft in African societies is a taken-for-granted concept.32It is believed that possessors of this spirit perform extraordinary activities, nega- tively or positively. Traditional cosmology of witchcraft posits that the spirit can be transmitted from mother to child or acquired through contact with

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Newell, “Pentecostal Witchcraft,” 462.

Ibid., 463.

John S. Pobee, “Religion and Politics in Ghana: A Case Study of the Acheampong Era 1972–1978,” inter-faculty lecture, January 10, 1980 (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1992), 1.

Paul Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy (London: Hurst, 2004).

Richard Cook has observed the lack of active involvement of pentecostals in political activities. However, recent realities contradict this. Omenyo, “A Comparative Analysis of the Development Intervention,” 19.

Abraham Akrong, “A Phenomenology of Witchcraft in Ghana,” in Imagining Evil: Witch- craft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa, ed. Gerrie ter Haar, Religion in Con- temporary Africa Series (Trenton,njand Asmara: African World Press, 2007), 53–66.

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an evil person or object.33 The spirit can also be given as a gift. Popular sto- ries are told of religious objects—such as the rosary, devotional scapular, and even the Bible—that can be used as vessels of evil machination. According to Parish, some rival pentecostal churches would distribute Bibles that con- tain occult powers. Once a person accepts this Bible, he or she receives the witchcraft spirit, even if unknowingly.34A young woman told me that although she believes in the devotional scapular given to her as a gift, for example, she would not use it on her newborn child because it can be used as a medium of transferring an evil spirit to her child.

There is also the belief in the blind witch, defined as “one who is nothing but a mere playground for witchcraft experiments and manipulations.”35Such “witches” are usually unconscious of possessing this power. People growing up in a Ghanaian village are aware of stories of people whose bodies have been used as vessels of witchcraft activity. Victims usually suffer from barrenness, uncontrolled drinking, smoking and drug problems, and a never-to-be healed wound. In the case of the sufferers of incurable wounds, the common explana- tion is that during the night, the exact location of the wound is used by witches as their chopping board. As such, any time the knife touches this “chopping board” spiritually, the wound is physically renewed. Some blind witches also struggle, albeit unsuccessfully, to lead or maintain the life they desire.

The idea inherent in witchdemonic manipulations is that witches and de- mons disrupt the success of the individual. These forces are generally perceived as supernatural powers whose activities bring negative or positive results to the individual, the family, and the larger community. The popular Ghanaian musician A.B. Crentsil, in his song “Devil,” distinguishes between black and white witchcraft. The former, associated with black Africans, is destructive and malevolent while the latter is good and innovative. Traditionally, however, the impression is that the spirit is neither good nor bad, but is neutral.36 Yet, it is often perceived in negative terms. Traditional notions and ontology, as Akrong asserts, “provide the social lexicon, vocabulary and concepts by which the

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E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); Kofi Asare Opoku, West African Traditional Religion (Accra: fep International Private Ltd, 1978), 143.

Parish, “The Dynamics of Witchcraft and Indigenous Shrines among the Akan,” 433 and 438.

Iyke Nathan Uzorma, Occult Grand Master: Now in Christ (Benin City, Nigeria: Goodnews Publications, 1994), 43–46.

Akrong, “A Phenomenology of Witchcraft in Ghana,” 54.

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witchcraft phenomenon is described and articulated.”37 This negative meta- physical framework has been appropriated by pentecostals in a way that casts witchcraft and demons in often violent, destructive, and malevolent terms.

In the introduction to his Occult Grand Master: Now in Christ, Iyke Nathan Uzorma describes what he believes to be the condition of this world. Accord- ing to him, the planet earth is a realm of what he calls “psychic attack” and the manipulations of the powers of darkness. He believes that while unbelievers “will always remain in the dungeon of Satanic predicaments, in their presump- tuous attempts to battle the demons of our time, those who believe in Christ will always have victory in each and every battle.”38Uzorma believes that there are only two categories of people here on earth: those who live their lives con- scious of and recognizing the sovereignty of Christ, and those who are bereft of the authority of Christ in their lives.39 The second category, those who do not have Jesus in the center of their daily lives, he says, are hopeless in the world. They are under constant manipulations of demons and witches who operate through such situations as frustration, unemployment, barrenness, and anger. In a state of anger, for example, an individual can be possessed and manipu- lated to stimulate the art of “[W]itchcraft business.”40People with uncontrolled quarrelling skills are believed to be agents of the devil. It is within this con- ceptual categorization that the plight of victims of witchcraft is exacerbated in both traditional and neo-prophetic pentecostal religious traditions.

The Tension

With the conceptual similarities that abound in both the traditional and the pentecostal notions of witchcraft, the question that needs to be asked is, What kindles the tension between the two traditions? Indeed, the nature of this ten- sion exists in different forms. Different traditions pursue common goals differ- ently. Antagonisms and hostilities also occur when different groups compete for the same space and claims.41Bourdieu observes that differences in ideology serve as a potential context for completion. He points out that the struggle for religious power between and among religious actors is a crucial and essential

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Ibid., 55.

Uzorma,Occult Grand Master, 9.

Ibid., 9–10.

Ibid., 40.

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, ed.,Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Afri- ca(Eugene,or: Wipf & Stock, 2009).

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element in the society that determines the dynamics of the religious field. Thus, as Terry Rey argues, distinction leads to domination.42 In Ghana, although the traditional religious beliefs and practices provide pentecostalism with “a fertile ground in the all-pervasive primal religious traditions, especially in its cosmol- ogy and in its concept of salvation,”43the former and its agents are also targets of the severest attacks from pentecostals. Elsewhere Newell records that while the pentecostal power to fend off the dangers of witchcraft provides some form of comfort and consolation, at the same time it presents some ambivalence in the society, creating hidden dangers in the minds of most people.44

In the competition between pentecostals and traditional religion, the values and adherents of the latter are reified and doubted. Hackett has also observed that in their attempt “to reshape the lives of their members along biblical lines, they can be somewhat merciless toward ‘traditional’ and ‘ancestral’ cultural beliefs and practices.”45Thus the contest for symbolic power involves misrecog- nition of the other.46The traditional religious landscape, what Bourdieu refers to as the field, is cast as representing an otherness that poses danger (compe- tition) to pentecostalism, which projects itself as the true religion, the posses- sor of spiritual capital. Solutions received outside of the power of Jesus Christ are still considered as part of demonic manipulations.47 As Uzorma notes, if you receive healing, for example, from a traditional religious specialist, even if the disease goes away, it could still reappear as a different form of prob- lem.

Taylor, like Bourdieu and others, has noted that the competition for space, power, and recognition also entails prejudice against the other.48 In Ghana, Omenyo has observed that Ghanaian pentecostal/charismatic Christians are uncomfortable with the presence of indigenous and Islamic religions that pro-

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Terry Rey, Bourdieu on Religion: Imposing Faith and Legitimacy (London and Oakville: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2007), 55.

Emmanuel Kingsley Larbi, “The Nature of Continuity and Discontinuity of Ghanaian Pen- tecostal Concept of Salvation in African Cosmology,”Asian Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5, no. 1 (2002): 99–119.

Newell, “Pentecostal Witchcraft,” 473.

Rosalind I.J. Hackett, “Charismatic/Pentecostal Appropriation of Media Technologies in Nigeria and Ghana,” Journal of Religion in Africa27, no. 3 (1998): 258–277.

For discussion on misrecognition, see Charles Tylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Mul- ticulturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Charles Tylor and Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

Uzorma,Occult Grand Master, 36.

Tylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 24.

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vide an alternative or complementary source of spiritual protection.49 These two non-Christian traditions are seen as a threat to the Ghanaian religious field and pentecostals see it as a duty to put a check on their growth. Much of the rhetoric has been offensive and provocative to adherents of these non- Christian traditions, especially adherents of Islam.50 This creates tension in society.

The discourse of witchcraft creates an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, stigma- tization, and, above all, unjustifiable executions. The “reality” of this is shown by the film industry and in the media who have appropriated this to their advantage, earning fortunes from the number of movies depicting the oper- ations of evil forces and the supreme power of pastor-prophets in overcom- ing these spirits.51 Critics argue that tension usually emanates when pastor- prophets exhibit an uncompromising stance on traditional religious cultural values, which are usually cast as fertilizing the ground for witchcraft activi- ties.52 Witches, often located in this landscape, are believed to be responsible for the mishaps that befall followers.53Common targets of witchdemonic accu- sations are often close relatives: mostly female members of the extended family, aunties, mother-in-laws, cousins, stepchildren, among others. The traditional Akan maxim, sε aboa bi bεka wo a, na εfiri wo ntoma mu, which is loosely translated as “If an insect will bite you, then it is from your own cloth,” gives a greater understanding of the reality of the accusation of close relatives. On June 8, 2010, the media carried out a worrying report under the banner title “Woman Chained Nine Years for Having Sex in the Bush.”54The victim, believed to be in her thirties at the time, was chained for nine years by her mother, who under the revelation of a pastor accused her of being a witch and the source of their family misery. This came to light when, in 2001, the victim was sent

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Cephas N. Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism (Zoetermeer, Netherlands: Boeken- centrum Publishing House, 2006), 33.

Patrick Ryan, “Islam in Ghana: Its Major Influence and the Situation Today,” 180, quoted in Omenyo, Pentecost, 33. See alsoGhanaian Times, December 5, 1995.

Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Anointing Through the Screen: Neo-Pentecostalism and Tele- vised Christianity in Ghana,”Studies in World Christianity11, no. 1 (2005): 9–28. Brigit Meyer, “Impossible Representations: Pentecostalism, Vision and Video Technology in Ghana” (A Working Paper, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, 2003); see also her “‘Make a Complete Break with the Past’: Memory and Post-Colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse,”Journal of Religion in Africa28, no. 3 (1998): 316–349. See Opoku Onyinah, “Contemporary ‘Witchdemonology’ in Africa,”International Review of Mission93, no. 370–371 (October 2004): 327–542 at 332.

“Woman Chained for Nine Years for Having Sex in the Bush,”Daily Guide, August 8, 2008.

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to the pastor for spiritual cleansing after she was alleged to have had sex with her boyfriend in the bush. Part of the ritual to deliver her was to chain her for prayers. Throughout these years of her ordeal, the victim lived on the charity of neighbors who surreptitiously threw food to her in the absence of her mother. This was done secretly so as not to incur the wrath of the victim’s mother. In an interview with a local radio station, the report says, the victim’s mother admit- ted the act and confirmed she acted under the instruction of a pastor.

The above example indicates that witchcraft accusation results in the al- leged witch being ostracized or treated in inhumane ways. Some victims are eliminated from the wider circle of relatives, thereby decreasing the size of the extended family. Likewise, the discourse on witchcraft deemphasizes the influ- ence of the sense of community that some pastor-prophets cast as siphons of accumulated symbolic capital.

Part of the ritual involves the victim’s open acknowledgment of the posses- sion of the spirit before the deployment of the blood of Christ to cast out such a spirit. Often times, failure to admit this results in forced confession, which involves humiliation and abuse. For example, in 2011, the popular Nigerian bishop Dr. David Oyedepo, the founder and presiding bishop of Living Faith Church, was seen on camera physically and verbally abusing a young woman who refused to admit that she was a witch.55 The woman, whom the bishop called “a foul devil,” had initially denied being a witch. After further interroga- tion, she admitted being a witch but only “a witch for Jesus,” an admission seen by the bishop as blasphemous. This angered him; he asked the young woman: “Do you know who you are talking to?” After slapping and cursing the woman, the bishop left her with the caution: “You are not set for deliverance and you are free to go to hell.”56

In Bourdieu’s theory of practice, all forms of capital can be translated into symbolic capital and thus into what we may call weapons of symbolic violence. The relation between symbolic capital and symbolic violence becomes essen- tial when we take into consideration what Rey notes: “it is only when armed with symbolic capital that any agent, institutional or individual, can commit acts of symbolic violence and endanger in dominated groups and individuals the misrecognition of the social order as something natural.”57This form of vio- lence is not just symbolic but can also be deadly. In yet another instance, in

55

56 57

“BishopOyedeposlaps a witchon the face,”http://youtube.com/watch?v=l0sYgOgB2 _Y.

Ibid.

Rey, Bourdieu on Religion, 54.

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August 2009, a forty-year-old woman, Esther Ayeley, as reported by the media,58 met her untimely death after she was alleged to have been caned by a pastor in the eastern region of Ghana. The pastor was said to have testified during the church’s deliverance service that the woman and her two daughters were pos- sessed by witchdemonic powers. As part of the ritual to deliver her, the pastor, with the help of some members of the church, lashed her until she collapsed and died the following day, an event that raised issues of human rights con- cerns.

Human Rights

The impact of this discourse and actions evokes some human rights and peace- building implications. Indeed, the rights of persons accused of being witches have always been a major challenge to Ghanaian society. Gray’s accounts cited earlier provide an insightful context for understanding the extent to which the phenomenon of witchcraft accusation became a major challenge to the colonial administration. In 1927, the colonial government through the Native Administration Ordinance gave powers to the traditional authorities to take to trial cases including witchcraft accusations. This subsequently gave great pow- ers to the traditional shrines, which the chiefs relied on for the verification of cases of witchcraft accusations. However, the abuses inherent in the mode of verification became a major source of concern to the colonial government.59 Part of the verification involved trial by ordeal, which demanded that victims be forced to drink a poisonous herbal concoction made from the bark of the odum or iroko tree (Chlorophora excelsa). Alarmed by this, the colonial gov- ernment through the passage of the Order in Council (No. 28) sought to limit the powers of the traditional authorities to try witchcraft cases. Yet, the phe- nomenon and its abuses persisted in the society.

Within contemporary human rights frameworks, the concept of witchde- monology, as has already been argued, legitimizes the unsympathetic treat- ment of alleged witches in the form of violence and torture. Article 2 (1) of the ConventionagainstTortureandotherCruel,InhumanorDegradingTreatmentor Punishmentenjoins member states to take effective legislative, administrative, judicial, or other measures to prevent acts of torture in their territory. Torture in

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“Pastor Whips Church Member to Death,” August 19, 2009, ghanaweb.com. Accessed May 11, 2014. http://ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/religion/artikel.php?ID=166843. Gray, “Witches, Oracles, and Colonial Law.”

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thisdocument is defined toimply the infliction ofpain and suffering onvictims. Yet, the state of Ghana has not done enough to protect the rights of victims of witchcraft, who are often tortured. On November 20, 2010, the Ghanaian news- paper theDaily Graphicreported that a seventy-two-year-old grandma accused by a pastor of being a witch was burnt alive by a mob who sought spiritual jus- tice.60 This was after demands from the pastor to exact a confession from the alleged witch failed. A student nurse who attempted to rescue the old woman from her ordeal also met her untimely death from burns.61 Those accused of witchcraft have also had their basic right of freedom of movement restricted, as was shown in the previous example involving the woman chained for nine years.

The success of deliverance-oriented pentecostalism in incorporating local ideas and practices pertaining to old gods, witchcraft, and new spirits into its discourse helps to explainits dominating influence on Ghanaian religioushabi- tus. But as Meyer has noted, this incorporation also has negative effects in the sense that, while deliverance-oriented pentecostalism confirms the existence of these demonic beings, these beings are at the same time regarded as agents operating under the auspices of Satan who therefore must be resisted.62 A 2010unicefreport on contemporary practices of witchcraft implicated pastor- prophets. Although the report admitted that pastor-prophets are not always the originators of the accusation, it also noted that pastor-prophets confirm and legitimize such accusations, which leads to the maltreatment of victims.63

The ambivalence of all these teachings and practices is that, as was pointed out earlier, pastor-prophets play a major role in making sense of postcolonial socioeconomic and political disenchantment. People depend on them not only for healing and deliverance, but also for reading meaning into their socioe- conomic conditions. The belief is that since pastor-prophets have the key— the symbolic capital—that unlocks every religious, social, political, and eco- nomic enigma, relying on them is the surest way of protecting oneself. Due to their socioeconomic and spiritual indispensability, the fear is that cut off from them, the vulnerable individual victim can do nothing in society. This

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61 62

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Della Russel Ocloo, “Grandma Set Ablaze To Exorcise Witchcraft,”Daily Graphic, Novem- ber 29, 2010.

Ibid.

Birgit Meyer, “‘Make a Complete Break with the Past.’ Memory and Post-Colonial Moder- nity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28, no. 3 (1998): 316–49.

Aleksandra Cimpric, Children Accused of Witchcraft: An Anthropological Study of Contem- porary Practices in Africa(Dakar:unicef wcaaro, April 2010), 34–35.

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creates what Akrong has called “a dependency syndrome” with its attending exploitative results.64 As Asamoah-Gyadu has also observed, images of tele- vised neo-pentecostal Christianity are designed to echo success and validate the impression by pastors “that they are purveyors or mediators of a special power that is cast as ‘the anointing.’”65

Owing to the prevalence of witchcraft belief, in most deliverance-oriented churches the focal point of attraction and importance turns out to be the leader of the group. The leader, according to Omenyo, is the one who recommends the ritual prescriptions. This experience, he says, “can be enslaving since it has the tendency of leading believers always to look for men and women of power to give direction as to how they can protect themselves from danger, thus creating a kind of ‘dependency syndrome.’”66

A 2010 International Religious Freedom report recounts that many of the religiously motivated incidences of human rights abuses occurred at prayer camps, which are mainly operated by pentecostal churches.67According to the report, the victims, most of whom are mental patients, were chained for several weeks, physically abused, and denied food and water in the name of spiritual cleansing meant to exorcise witchdemonic spirits.

Cases have also been reported of unsuspecting women being sexually abused in the name of exorcism and ritual cleansing.68The activities of pastor- prophets involved in these cases portray a negative image of pentecostalism and also have implications for the rights of society members who fall victim to these activities. The challenge, however, is that while classical and neo- pentecostal Christian churches have strict guidelines and have made great

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65 66

67

68

Abraham Akrong, “Neo-Witchcraft Mentality in Popular Christianity,” Research Review New Series 16, no. 1 (2000): 1–12.

Asamoah-Gyadu, “Anointing Through the Screen,” 11.

Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism, 236. See also Andrew Walker, “The Devil You Think You Know: Demonology and the Charismatic Movement,” in Charismatic Renewal: Search for a Theology, ed. Tome Smail et al. (London:spck, 1993), 74.

See the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report by the u.s. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor under the Department of State. See the website for more details on this report at http://state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010/148693.htm. Prayer camps have similarly been implicated in the 2012 Human Rights Watch report as some of the flashpoints where these abuses occur. See also “Like a Death Sentence”: Abuses against Persons with Mental Disabilities in Ghana (Human Rights Watch, October 2012). Pastor Rapes Unconscious Student after Applying “Anointing Oil,” April 10, 2014 http:// myjoyonline.com/news/2014/April-10th/pastor-rapes-unconscious-student-after- applying-anointing-oil.php; “Pastor Rapes Five Sisters,” August 18, 2011 http://www .ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=216629.

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efforts to check such activities, in most cases the neo-prophetic churches’ policies governing witchcraft exorcism are unclear. That is, there are no spe- cific guidelines or precedents that govern witchcraft deliverance, although some claim they have guidelines based on the dignity of every human being. One reason for this lack of deliverance guidelines in these churches is the unstructured nature of this strand of pentecostalism. Neo-prophetic pente- costal churches usually operate under no particular religious body or hierarchy. As such, an individual pastor’s temperament and/or theological understanding of the mode of deliverance influences how much coercion or violence is needed to cast out a resistant demon. Yet, violent incidents, while more common in the neo-prophetic churches, sometimes occur even in the megachurches with a well-organized hierarchical structure, as exemplified in the case involving the young woman and Bishop Oyedepo referred to earlier.

In a legally plural and multireligious society such as Ghana, the discussion so far raises the question of the degree to which the government can intervene in the activities of these churches and prayer camps. In addition, the Ghanaian courts and the legal systems appear largely to lack the necessary expertise to handle spiritual cases. Even governmental agencies such as the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection together with the judiciary and other human rights organizations have been largely weak and unsuccessful in their fight to protect people accused of witchcraft. The accused witches, most of whom are poor, ill-informed, and powerless, have no or little access to the public space in which they can state their case.

Some have even called for the state and its agents to enact laws that seek to “regulate churches, including the closure of those found to be carrying out child witch stigmatisation and abuse, and ensure the arrest of the perpetrators.”69 While this recommendation is well intentioned, the closure of churches and enactment of such laws do not appear to be the most practical solution. Indeed, it can be argued that Ghana does not need new laws to deal with such cases. What is needed in this situation is a clear demonstration of commitment to the already existing laws that seek to address religious freedom and liberty of citizens. Complaints of abuses must be investigated swiftly and justice served impartially. Situations whereby efforts are made to conceal the identity of offending pastor-prophets for the sake of the protection of the integrity of their church must be subjected to a second look.

69

Lynda Battarbee, Gary Foxcroft, and Emilie Secker, Witchcraft Stigmatisation and Chil- dren’s Rights in Nigeria, Report prepared for the 54th Session of the un Committee on the Rights of the Child Geneva (Lancaster,uk: Stepping Stones Nigeria, May 2010), 9.

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Owing to the fact that some of these abuses take place outside the confines of “religious” premises, it is important to take the issue of empowerment seriously. It is believed that with the current proliferation of the media and other splin- tering state actors, many pastor-prophets whose activities abused their clients’ rights will either be exposed and dealt with by the law, or desist from the prac- tice to avoid such attention. However, interviews with some of the victims sug- gest that once such issues come to the public domain, these victims are often doubly victimized, first by their perpetrators and, second, by the larger soci- ety. So feared and calamitous are witchcraft accusations in Ghana that many, especially women, according to Victor Gdezi, are unable “to use a rights frame- work to contest their claims over property for fear of spiritual reprisals from family members and other disputing parties.”70 Abamfo Atiemo has similarly observed that even where those victimized as witches are able to seek justice within the formal legal framework, they are still constrained by the traditional communal demands and therefore usually plead that offenders be punished but not too harshly.71

While Ghanaian local fm stations and other informal discussions have in- tensified public awareness of the problem, most victims of witchcraft accusa- tions and their families have been particularly conscious of their personal and social identity. They have also been conscious of the larger community bond- ing and the social standing of perpetrators. Thus those victimized as witches and their frustrated families have often sought for an “off legal” settlement or silence over the issue in order to save the image of the family. But if protection of identity can be assured while, at the same time, punishment is meted out to the perpetrators of such abuses, more people will be bold enough to come forward to report the abuses.

Conclusion

The belief in the activities and operations of witchdemonic forces is an essen- tial part of traditional African religion. By enacting ordinances, British colonial administration attempted to suppress the phenomenon of witches and their

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Victor S. Gedzi, “Principles and Practices of Dispute Resolution in Ghana: Ewe and Akan Procedures on Female Inheritance and Property Rights” (Ph.D. dissertation, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University of Rotterdam, 2009), 134.

Abamfo O. Atiemo, “Punish My Husband but Not So Hard: Religion, Customary Values and Conventional Approaches to Human Rights in Ghana,”Religion and Human Rights7, no. 2 (2012): 71–93.

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accusations but failed to make a strong impact. Similar attempts by the early missionaries to confront the belief were also frustrated due to the strength of witchdemonic beliefs in society. Even when these foreign agents thought they had succeeded in suppressing the activities of the anti-witchcraft cults and shrines that proliferated in the early part of the twentieth century, such opera- tions were quickly taken over by the African Independent Churches.

The belief in witchcraft has become an integral part of pentecostal discourse. But pentecostal belief in witchcraft represents a synthesis of the indigenous belief and western notions of demonic possession. Witches, often located in this landscape, are believed to be responsible for the mishaps that affect follow- ers. Pentecostal deliverance ministry has largely replaced the anti-witchcraft shrines and exorcist activities of the African indigenous churches. In the wake of such factors as the failure of the modern nation-state to fulfill its promises of suitable socioeconomic life, people turn to pastor-prophets for such promises. Many pentecostals have been empowered by the message of pastor-prophets to find meaning in life. Some of these pastor-prophets, however, take advantage of the situation to commit untold abuses against their clientele. This has some implications for human rights development and implementation in a transi- tional society like Ghana, a topic that I have touched on here. I hope that the curtain has been opened for further scholarly discussion on this disturbing but ambivalent situation that challenges religious and legal pluralism and human rights development in Ghana.

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