WITCHCRAFT IN COURTROOMS. SOME REFLECTION ON POST-COLONIAL AFRICA

Abstract

Today witchcraft and occult practices are significant part of social interactions, economic and political processes in Africa. The theoretical basis of the given article are the ideas of modern ethnologists and anthropologists, which consider magic and witchcraft as a social system, regulating and supporting the tension balance of the post-colonial African societies. The starting point is the thesis of modernization models plurality in contemporary societies, which determines the idea of ​​witchcraft and magic as an integral part of single modernizations. Thus witchcraft appears not only as a relic of the past, but mostly as a volatile paradigm, the content of which may vary and take on other configurations, while remaining effective basis in the post-colonial society. Cases of a judicial incidents and political phenomena of modern African states were used in this article as arguments, they proving the efficacy of witchcraft, as part of the discourse production in the opposition press, orally transmittable rumors and gossip, as a kind of weapon of the socio political opposition to official authorities and society.

Keywords

• post-colonial africa
• the phenomenon of witchcraft
• anti-witchcraft cults
• multiplicity of modernizations
• litigation
• alternative sources of power