Ghana is one of the last countries in the world to still have open-air prisons for “witches”. Six makeshift camps, all located in the north of the country, where people accused of witchcraft are confined in conditions of extreme poverty. The excluded, sent to these reserves by their families to avoid being lynched, remain there until the end of their days, without official supervision or aid from the State.
There are 500 today according to Amnesty International, and 870 according to the interfaith think tank Sanneh Institute which identified them in 2021. Women in 90% of cases, often elderly, widowed or single. All victims of ostracism which the Ghanaian Parliament intends to soon put an end to.
The latter voted on July 27 for a bill, carried by opposition deputy Francis-Xavier Kojo Sosu, aimed at protecting people accused of witchcraft, by reclassifying their mistreatment or their banishment from the community as a crime. The text must now be ratified by President Nana Akufo-Addo, to whom civil society organizations working in the camps will send, in the coming days, an open letter to alert him to the urgency of the situation .
The vote in Parliament in July took place three years, almost to the day, after the violent and high-profile death of Akua Denteh in Kafaba, in the Savanes region in the north of the country. The victim, whose age local media estimated at over 90, had been accused of witchcraft by a traditional priestess. His supposed crime: casting a curse to stop the rain from falling.
Lynchings
A video that went viral showed Akua Denteh being tortured to death by two women, including the priestess herself, in the village square with fists, whips and stones. His ordeal lasted several hours in front of an audience that can sometimes be heard cheering for the executioners. The assassination, described as “barbaric” by President Nana Akufo-Addo, resulted in the arrest of seven people.
The two murderers were sentenced in July to twelve years in prison, but the five other accused, including the village chief of Kafaba, were acquitted of all charges against them. The spectators of the lynching, who nevertheless appear with their faces uncovered in the video, were not worried. The case of Akua Denteh is not isolated. Two people were lynched on May 7 in Zakpalsi, in the northeastern district of Mion.
In most cases, this violence goes unpunished. “The law is poorly applied in Ghana in general, and even more so when the victims come from poor rural populations. Additionally, the accusation of witchcraft is usually made by a member of the victim’s family, so the family and the village tend to exert pressure to cover up the matter. The bill seeks to extend criminal liability to all actors in this type of popular trial,” explains John Azumah, executive director of the Sanneh Institute, which chairs a coalition of civil society organizations that worked on the text and campaigned for its adoption.
Holding customary authorities accountable
If the law is ratified by President Akufo-Addo, making an accusation of witchcraft will become punishable by three to five years in prison. Practicing the profession of “witch doctor”, translatable here as “witch hunter”, will be illegal, and local customary authorities held responsible for violence committed against the people concerned in their community. If the deterrent effect is not immediate, the coalition of NGOs has promised to provide legal assistance to those targeted.
The other part of the proposed law concerns women already accused of witchcraft and forced into exile to escape persecution. In particular, it provides for the dismantling of makeshift camps where they are crowded together and left to their own devices, without protection measures or financial support.
“The Ghanaian government does not have a structure intended to protect the weakest,” summarizes John Azumah. If your family lets you down, you have nothing left. » Exiles can sometimes work in the fields if the village adjacent to their camp grants them some land. The others comb the market square after the traders have left to collect the fruits and tubers that have fallen into the dust.
The camps also include dozens of children and adolescents, often sent by families to accompany the disgraced elder. Unschooled, these collateral victims of persecution are extremely vulnerable to violence and abuse. A volunteer from Gambaga, in the north-east of Ghana, the most populous of the six camps, who served there for years, was recently accused of having raped several little girls.
Collateral victims
Several of them became pregnant. “There are a lot of cases of child marriage,” adds John Azumah. This is a form of blackmail. As soon as they are 12, 13 or 14 years old, men from the neighboring community offer the young girls to marry them, in exchange for which they promise to take care of them and their grandmother. »
The Ghanaian government had already tried unsuccessfully to dismantle these camps in 2014. But this time, the actors behind the bill are hopeful of initiating real change, by adopting a more comprehensive approach to the problem. “Punishing is one thing, but we also need to raise awareness in communities where accusations of witchcraft are recurrent,” professes John Azumah.
When awareness has sufficiently borne fruit, exiled pseudo-witches can risk returning to their community of origin. To others, help will be offered to settle in any other village of their choice. As for the children, they should be sent back to their families and sent to school. The organizations working on site hope to gradually empty the camps over three years.
