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Outrageous: The lynching of “witches” in Kisii
My greatest concern is the fearful fact that modern, educated, grown humans do actually believe in witchcraft! Sorcery is a myth. Why can’t people understand that there is no mysterious external power controlling there lives?
The failure to recognize this has led to great persecution and vigilantism in Kisii against people perceived to be different. Lonely, aged, poor and powerless women and men whose only offences were oddity at a time when crops failed or milk spoilt have paid the ultimate price. People have been targeted for no reason other than jealousy, a strange birthmark, living alone, mental illness, cultivation of medicinal herbs, or simply because they are falsely accused.
It is atrocious that most Kisiis still believe misfortune is directly caused by witchcraft. If the crops failed, someone loses their job or a you or a loved one falls ill, blaming a witch is the convenient thing to do. Sadly, this is not a fallacy held only by the peasants but also by the educated (including Christian preachers who actually actively help perpetuate the myth!) amongst the Gusii who often juice up their fantasies with elaborate satanic theories. Indeed the community even has a saying that goes “tiyanya gokwa etaberegeti getondo” loosely translated, it means that nobody dies without a reason (we all fucking die, dofuses! It is natural!). They have this outrageous idea that some people domesticate wild animals like snakes and hyenas which they then use as means of teleporting them to remote places for their evil work. (If there was any such science we’d be the most advanced society ever, don’t you think?)
Some five centuries ago Europe experienced a similar superstitious uprising. An instructive book was even crafted during that time purporting to prove that witchcraft existed. Written in 1486, “Malleus Maleficarum” was meant to be the guide-book for magistrates on the procedures that could be used to find witches out and convict them. Consequently, the manuscript became the handbook for witch-hunters and inquisitors during that dark period. Among other crazy things, it described what were then known as ordeals. If you passed the ordeals then you were innocent and if you failed you were guilty. One such ordeal was the ordeal by cold water. The long and the short of it was that if a suspect was brought forth, they were to be tied and immersed in cold water whereby if they sank, they were innocent and there was to be no punishment but if they floated, they were guilty! Talk of “catch 22”! The Malleus Maleficarum serves as a horrible warning about what happens when intolerance takes over the society.
Like the then Euope, people who are being accused of witchcraft in Kisii are mostly old women that often take care of children or are out begging for money. Sometimes if a child died in her care, there is always a chance that she would be accused of bewitching the child.
The enlightenment that occurred in Europe 400 years ago helped to end the witch-hunts in Europe. It brought empirical reason, skepticism and humanitarianism which helped defeat the superstitions of the earlier age. It gradually occurred to people that there was no empirical evidence that alleged witches were responsible for any calamities and taught that the use of torture to force confessions was inhumane. What will it take for us to be enlightened?
