By Ogova Ondego
Published August 6, 2023
A public lecture titled ‘African Witchcraft’ has called for research and re-definition of the term ‘witchcraft’ that fails to aptly capture the reality of the African world.
Renowned writer David Maillu, while speaking on the subject at Mathemboni Arts Centre in Makueni County on the eastern side of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, called for the re-definition after many participants said they were more confused than they were enlightened after listening to him on August 5, 2023.
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Maillu was reacting to observation from participants who felt that it was wrong to describe the work of diviners, herbalists, magicians, night runners, sorcerers, wizards and witches interchangeably as ‘witchcraft’. They felt that only works done to harm others are the ones that should be referred to as witchcraft, guided by Maillu’s own definition of a witch as ‘any one who employs any substance to harm or kill someone else’. The lecture participants said they failed to see how the good work of diviners, herbalists and prophets could be described as witchcraft. They noted that even African languages had different terms for the various practices. For instance, they said, Kiswahili has terms like Uchawi, Ulozi, Urogi and Uganga.
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Saying witches are dangerous in any African community as they use their knowledge against other people, Maillu who comes from the Kamba community and from which he drew examples to illustrate his lecture and art, defined witchcraft as hidden knowledge that can be explained not by physics or the empirical evidence of the five senses of seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting and feeling but by metaphysics or the sixth sense that can’t be explained by tangible data.
“The coin of science has two sides; physics and metaphysics,” observed Maillu who holds a Doctor of Letters degree in African Literature and Political Philosophy from St Clements University of south Australia.
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“Metaphysics brings on board the whole package of mysteries – prophesies, ancestral spirits, dreams, predestination, psyche… Metaphysics is the law of natural forces. The physical and metaphysical worlds balance in strength,” Maillu, who is also President of African Spirituality intoned.
Maillu observed that one who relies only on the physical and not the metaphysical side of life cannot understand reality as “both the physical and the metaphysical sides are … complementary” sides of the same coin.
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“It should go without any single doubt the importance of making thorough research regarding the immense hidden secrets of the Black Man’s world of spiritualism and biochemistry,” he said.
Referring to it as heritage, Maillu said “It is the history of the black race’s utility of this subject commonly known as witchcraft, which could revolutionize the medical world.”
So how does witchcraft work?
Practitioners of witchcraft can harm only the people whose personal material – urine, hair, nails, saliva, sperm, blood, bones, underwear, shoes, handkerchiefs – they have collected. He observed that these are the same material used in science to extract people’s DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) or to track down people by hunter dogs.
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Maillu said that a man, if given a concoction of sweat harvested from the special and extra-long clitoris mixed with dried leaves of a plant known as Kithiia,could turn him into a zombie.
He said there is hardly any home in Ukambani that has not heard of ‘mbingo’, a biochemical material used … to safeguard homesteads from thieves.The Akamba, he said, have material for recalling lost people home, for protecting girls from pre-marital pregnancy, for preventing husbands from adultery, and even for setting people against their families or driving them away from home.
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“Among Akamba people, one of the deadliest poisons that witches use to kill their competitors is called ‘nziki’, a powder made out of dried crocodile bile. A plant called ‘mbongolo’ is used to create insanity,” Maillu said.
Maillu illustrated his lecture with anecdotes.
“One day a naughty young man that I know (today he’s in his 70s!) crossed paths with the woman that children [had been warned to avoid] and challenged her: ‘I hear you are a witch, but you can’t bewitch me!’ … When the woman tried to warn him by pressing her fingers on top of his head, he got a shock that paralysed him from top to bottom and, for a while, lost his bearing … He didn’t recover from the shock until the next day.”
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Kenya’s Law on Witchcraft (Witchcraft Act), crafted by the British colonial authorities in 1925 and that seems to be based only on the physical and not metaphysical world, forms Chapter 67 (Cap. 67) of the Laws of post-independent Kenya. It does not define witchcraft though it spells out the sanctions for people practising, using or encouraging the use of witchcraft.
Section 2 of the Act says that “Any person who holds himself out as a witchdoctor able to cause fear, annoyance or injury to another in mind, person or property, or who pretends to exercise any kind of supernatural power, witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment calculated to cause such fear, annoyance or injury, shall be guilty of an offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”
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Section 3 of the Act says: “Any person, professing a knowledge or the use of charms, who advises any person applying to him how to bewitch or injure persons, animals or other property, or who supplies any person with any article purporting to be a means of witchcraft, shall be guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.”
Section 4 of the Act says, “Any person who, of his pretended knowledge of so-called witchcraft, with intent to injure, uses or assists to use may be calculated to cause fear, annoyance or injury in mind, person or property to any person shall be guilty of an offense and liable to the same punishment as is provided in section 3”.
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There are 5 other sections dealing with possession of charms (section 6); accusing people of practising witchcraft (section 7); using witchcraft in catching alleged perpetrators of crime (section 7); administrators (chiefs) permitting the practice of witchcraft in their jurisdiction (section 8) and district commissioners restricting or banishing people practising witchcraft in certain places.
Among the people who attended the lecture and cultural tour of Mathemboni (shrines) Arts Centre that is also home to The Centre for African Aesthetics, Neterian African Worship and African Comb Books, were academics, psychologists, medical doctors, artists, writers, community mobilisers and developers, culture enthusiasts, critics, journalists, politicians, civil servants, technocrats, students and entrepreneurs from across the world.
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