Witchcraft Accusation in Ghana: Is Disbanding 'Witch Camps' the Solution?

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• C.Y. ANDY-K 8 years ago

  Leo,
  
  First, let me congratulate you on your relentless campaigning to stop these baseless superstitious practices.
  
  It is my contention that the camps MUST BE CLOSED DOWN, but in tandem with measures to shut down the a ...
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  Leo,
  
  First, let me congratulate you on your relentless campaigning to stop these baseless superstitious practices.
  
  It is my contention that the camps MUST BE CLOSED DOWN, but in tandem with measures to shut down the accusations through various means: education, punishing accusers severely, etc.
  
  I broached this in Part I of my series Intellectual Bankruptcy in Ghana thus:
  
  "It is my medium term intention to write a series of articles on this lack of civilization that continues to elude the superficial elite and bedevils the mass of Ghanaians, thereby making them stagnate since independence as “developing people”, the new politically correct euphemism for “backward people”. Worse, a process of dedifferentiation (ref. Tilly and others) has set in, with recent stories such as the families that have gone back, that is, regressed, into the forest in the Ho area of the Volta Region; the resurgence of child slavery and panyarring; President Mahama’s wife supervising the building of an alleged better and presumably improved witches’ camp instead of supervising the disbanding of the existing ones, with his husband ordering the arrest and imprisonment of anyone who hunted down, tortured or killed an old woman as a witch; even PhD holders defending the existence of “trokosi” and pronouncing their beliefs in witchcraft, juju and the wholesale religious syncretism that has engulfed the nation, from the hamlets to the Castle/Flagstaff House and our university lecture rooms which are supposed to tower over all in insight and knowledge! Yes, with some lecturers doubling up as lay preachers and leading the gullible masses down the aisle of obscurantism, ignorance and superstition are the order of the day! To understand the ongoing series of a million and one challenges we face in Ghana, and in the African world - not excluding the Black Diaspora - we must now begin to find answers to a series of old and new questions and puzzles; the million and one things which are wrong, we daily rant and rave about and want to change! My intention is simply to act as the catalyst, the devil’s advocate - to use an old cliché - to continue the debate; not answer all those questions and solve all the puzzles. That’s impossible for one person to do and I hold no such pretensions. After all, the debate is centuries old and my candid views should be seen as just a contribution to it. In fact, just as a re-echoing of what some had already said more elegantly but have been ignored".
  
  Speaks for itself.
  
  Andy-K

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• Yakubu 8 years ago

  Andy it is precisely because of the key point you have made here that I agree with Leo. The believe in juju and witchcraft is so pervasive in Ghana.I am seen in my community as a fool for not participating in juju adventurism ...
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  Andy it is precisely because of the key point you have made here that I agree with Leo. The believe in juju and witchcraft is so pervasive in Ghana.I am seen in my community as a fool for not participating in juju adventurism. We need to deal with the cause not the manifest. Bravo Leo

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• C.Y. ANDY-K 8 years ago

  Yakubu,
  
  There is no way one can compromise with the perpetrators of such human rights abuses by continuing to subject the victims to the conditions of their abuse, simply 'cos the culprits are superstitious will harm the v ...
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  Yakubu,
  
  There is no way one can compromise with the perpetrators of such human rights abuses by continuing to subject the victims to the conditions of their abuse, simply 'cos the culprits are superstitious will harm the victims if sent back to their communities. The State MUST that it has a superior power to inflict more severe harm on anyone who touched any alleged witch.
  
  the problem in Ghana is that we have "rulers" in Ghana who have no clue as to how to rule even a village and so don't know how to use state power to bring order to a nation like ours, as their antecedents didn't even have the privilege of ruling a village; even being gong gong beaters in the courts of the chiefs. Nkrumah was exceptional, as he was a chief himself and no doubt inhibited the lore of ruling. For some of us whose great uncles and grandfathers assisted the British to stamp out the slave trade, clamped down on ritual murders, abolished many negative cultural practices, this issue is just child's play to sort out, if we have State power in our hands and backing us. Of course, that means we must get rid of the time-wasters in the Flagstaff House. Within a year, nobody will touch anyone's grandma as a witch or ask for any one's child to be brought to a trokosi shrine.
  
  
  The time was long ripe to continue from where our antecedents stopped.
  
  Andy-K

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• I know you. 8 years ago

  How can the government banish witchcraft accusation? You don't believe there is God. Can any government make you believe that there is a God? Those who belie in God, can any government make them believe there is no God? I kn ...
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  How can the government banish witchcraft accusation? You don't believe there is God. Can any government make you believe that there is a God? Those who belie in God, can any government make them believe there is no God? I know you are an agent of Satan so stop your nonsense.

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• gds gtg ju 8 years ago

  You are talking nonsense. I can understand a shelter for the homeless or domestic abuse victims, but not witchcraft. Nonsense to be banished for life.

  You are talking nonsense. I can understand a shelter for the homeless or domestic abuse victims, but not witchcraft. Nonsense to be banished for life.

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