Ju-ju injustice

Wednesday, 22nd April 2009

‘Do you think that Africa is ever going to be free of these superstitions?’ asked the reporter Sorious Samura in the first of his four-part series, West African Journeys on the BBC World Service (Mondays). Sorious has been travelling round Ghana with Cletus Anaaya who works for a charity which is trying to stamp out the practice of killing ‘spirit children’, their fate decided by their parents and the soothsayers who declare them to be filled with evil spirits. Sorious was told by one man he talked to who had just killed a child, ‘I have ju-ju to help people. So when people come to me to kill an evil spirit I do not see anything wrong in that.’

The Concoction Man had given the ‘spirit child’ not just one but three doses of fatal poison. ‘The child should die before sunset,’ he said, after just one dose. But the child did not die. So he gave the child another dose. Still the child would not die. A third dose was given and eventually the child expired. ‘Would you have done that if that child were your own child?’ asked Sorious, getting straight to the point. ‘The concoction is not a poison,’ came the reply, with the kind of judicious obfuscation (at least as given to us by the translator) that’s so difficult to argue against. ‘It’s a herb meant to treat people. Only evil children will die.’

Sorious challenged him again, ‘Do you know that what you did was to murder a child?’ He was told, ‘I killed an evil spirit, not a child.’ But Sorious was still not satisfied. ‘Everyone who listens to you, who listens to this programme, will know that what you did was to kill a child, a human being.’

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