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“‘Flying Witch’ Crashes on Cliff”, screamed the front page of The Chronicle, one of Ghana’s most influential newspapers, on 8 September 2011. As the paper tells it, an elderly woman was found naked in the middle of a military compound, and when questioned said she had been flying with a number of fellow witches “when she came crashing to the ground.” The soldiers who found her apparently “laid her by the roadside” and reported the matter to the police, who promptly refused to have anything to do with the matter. Eventually Red Cross personnel provided her with basic care, and took her to two police stations, a psychiatric hospital and a clinic, all of which refused to provide any assistance to a weak and bruised woman in her eighties, presumably because they wanted nothing to do with a ‘witch’. Weeks later we find out, not surprisingly, that she is just a much-loved grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s who had simply lost her way.
I’d been wanting to shoot a piece on women accused of witchcraft for some time after hearing about Ghana’s ‘witch camps’ and then seeing Yaba Badoe’s documentary, Witches of Gambaga. An assignment for the UK's The Herald magazine finally allowed me to do just that.
The belief in witchcraft is widespread and deeply, deeply rooted in Ghana, and the notion that a person has been cursed or bewitched is used to explain all manner of unfortunate occurrences. One could possibly explain this away by saying that Ghana remains a place where many people are not well-enough educated to understand the causes of illnesses and disease, and so misfortunes are explained in terms of good versus evil and the workings of the supernatural. But even amongst the elite – well-off, well-travelled people with university educations and urbane, modern lives – even amongst people who understand how someone fell ill and died, witchcraft might be cited as the reason why.
Tales abound – flying witches, people who can turn into animals, fireflies that are really witches hunting at night, the man who was cursed and started shitting flies, the woman who was seen here and in Amsterdam at the same time – all told with a passionate seriousness and a fervent insistence that “It’s true! I’m telling you, it really happened!”
If it were simply that people believed, the matter could just be dismissed a quaint anachronism. But the expression of that belief is anything but quaint, with accused witches frequently being treated in a manner reminiscent of medieval Europe in the days of the Malleus Maleficarum, that infamous 15th century inquisitor’s handbook for the identification, gruesome torture and extermination of ‘witches’.
Consider the death last year of 72 year-old Ama Hemmah, who was found inside a neighbour’s home, accused of being a witch, and set ablaze by a mob that included a Christian pastor.
Consider Zenabu Bogi, whose fingers were placed in the jaws of an animal trap to force her to admit to her supposed evildoings.
Consider Asana Mabian, whose brother-in-law fell sick, and then dreamed that she was chasing him. He accused her of having cursed him, and with the assistance of other family members held her down and dripped molten plastic all over her bare breasts and pregnant belly to extract a confession. All the while her screaming children looked on.
Consider the absurdity of the test that a woman must pass to determine her ‘guilt’ or ‘innocence’: A chicken’s throat is cut, and the bird is thrown to the ground flailing in its death throes. If it comes to rest on its front or its side, the woman is a witch; if it dies on its back she may go free.
And note that I referred to the test that a woman must pass – almost all of those accused of witchcraft are women, with elderly widows disproportionately represented. In the country’s north in particular, where ‘witch camps’ – part sanctuary, part prison – exist, witchcraft cannot be separated from the patriarchal societal constructs that are in many ways disadvantageous to women. As women cannot own property, once widowed they often have nowhere to go – the house was their husband’s, and if they are no longer seen as useful or cannot be married off to their husband’s brother they are often unwanted. It appears that an accusation of witchcraft is sometimes a convenient way to get rid them. Jealousy between wives in a polygamous marriage is another common cause of spurious accusations, often with dire consequences for the accused.
Women who manage to acquire property or some measure of independence are also sometimes a target: For example, in the course of shooting these photographs I was told of a woman who managed to acquire a small herd of cattle, in itself no mean feat. As she could not own property, and feared she would have no recourse if a man took her cattle, she entrusted the herd to her brother. After the herd had grown, she decided she wanted to sell some of her cattle, and went to retrieve them from her brother. He decided he wanted to keep the cows, and so accused her of being a witch.
I have even heard it said, by a man regarded by many to be an ‘authority’ on the matter, that both men and women can be witches, but while men may use their powers for good or evil, women may only do evil.
In addition to having the surreal experience of being invited into a hut one morning, hearing noises in the darkness, and turning to find a woman giving birth on the floor, this was a mind-bending and heart-rending story to shoot. Yet people criticise me sometimes for putting pictures like these into the world, accusing me of portraying Ghana as backward at a time when the country is struggling to take her place amongst modern, middle-income nations. Well, as far as I’m concerned, torturing little old ladies is backward, and I’m not afraid to say so.
