Berkley Center

Living in Ghana has made me notice a few things about Americans. First, we like to pretend that we’re alone in the world. A lot of our public discourse and websites (I’m looking at you, Netflix) pretend that America, maybe Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia, are the only voices or actors in the world.

Second, we put up instructions and signs everywhere, as if no one will be around to give directions. In Ghana, the best way to figure out where to buy pens at the market isn’t to hunt down a directory or whip out a smart phone; it’s to start asking the banana sellers. If a stand runs out of spicy rice, they’ll tell each person who asks for rice for the next few hours that "emo asa" (the rice is finished), rather than hunt down a pen and paper and put up a sign, because they know that anyone who is curious can come and ask.

The third thing I’ve realized about Americans is that we’re superstitious. This third major realization came to me when I started looking into witchcraft beliefs in Ghana. Witchcraft shows up in most, if not all, of Sub-Saharan Africa, but its details and reception differ drastically from region to region. For example, Nigerian films about witchcraft are boring and confusing to Kenyans.

Despite this variation, when we talk about witchcraft we can broadly refer to it as "the ability to harm someone through the use of mystical power." As far as I can tell, Ghana, unlike the Central African Republic and some other nations, doesn’t have any laws against witchcraft. Ghana has a few refugee camps for those who have been "ousted" as witches and driven from their villages. In fact, there is a movement here to develop laws protecting those who have been accused of being witches. Unfortunately, accusations of witchcraft have led to major humanitarian crises in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and often older women and impoverished children are the major groups impacted.

Witchcraft is a cultural reality in Ghana, regardless of any scientific stance on its validity. Like fate, irony, luck, and karma, it addresses the why behind events, as opposed to the how. Why was this child struck by the falling coconut? Why did this particular man rise to power and wealth? Where I would attribute these things to luck, and many Americans would blame karma or fate—"It was meant to be," or, "He worked hard for it," some Ghanaians would look to some human agency. I guess that Americans like to think we’re alone. I’ve always been interested in how cultures construct and incorporate different, sometimes conflicting, parts of their mythos into a model to explain the world around them.

Since Christianity is a very visible and vocal part of Ghanaian culture (it’s not uncommon for “Are you a Christian?” to come up in the first five minutes of conversation and an invitation to someone’s service to come up in the first 20 minutes), I decided to look into how Christianity and witchcraft interact in the Ghanaian mythos.

On the surface, witchcraft and Christianity could appear as mutually exclusive belief systems, and they have certainly been interpreted as such historically. Looking at the animosity between European Christian missionaries in Africa and local belief systems during formal colonization efforts, you can see the two have definitely been pegged against each other.

Part of this collision may have its roots in the clashing political and cultural systems that came to be represented by the respective belief systems, but today the power struggles and social dynamics behind Christian reactions to witchcraft are not as clear. People are often more shocked that I don’t believe in witchcraft than that I am not religious, but I’ve heard Christian Ghanaians say although they believe in witchcraft, they don’t think that it can affect them—because they're Christian. Many who believe in both witchcraft and Christianity see their faith as offering protection against witchcraft.

Indeed, the Pentecostal church in Ghana has made the fight against witchcraft a major theme in their doctrine. They preform ceremonies to help cleanse former witches and draw strong parallels between witchcraft and the Christian devil. On the other hand, there are Christian aid groups in Northern Ghana working for the rights and well-being of those in witch camps.

In short, witchcraft—much like luck or individualism—is not a simple remnant of an old religion, but an adaptive component of modern culture.