21st century

Ezili Dantò and an Overview of Vodou
By Meagan E. Warren

Leaders of ritual in Vodou are called manbo (or mambo), priestesses, or houngan (or oungan), priests (Kingsbury and Chesnut 2019, 220). These leaders help practitioners to connect with the lwas. Lwas are an essential part of Vodou ritual.

They are spiritual entities that are served by vodouisants, practitioners of Vodou. Each lwa has a unique personality, unique interests, and unique associated rituals. Lwas do not have corporeal bodies. Rather, they are able to come into the human realm by possessing the bodies of practitioners. In Vodou ritual, possession is a powerful spiritual experience. It is described as being the lwa dancing in the head of the host and brings with it powers and abilities (Finch 2020, 305).

In Vodou practices, prayer alone is not enough to connect with the spirits. Instead, gifts and sacrifices must be given to the lwas, creating a reciprocal relationship between the vodouisants and the spirits (Kingsbury and Chesnut 2019, 220). Sacrifice, including the sacrifice of fowl and goats, is an essential part of Vodou. Today, Vodou continues to be practiced in the Caribbean and amongst people from African descent.

The depictions of Ezili Dantò are fascinating, showing both love and anger. She is often depicted as a compassionate mother and protector of the abused and oppressed, including women, children, the forgotten, and lesbians (Kingsbury and Chesnut 2019, 211-2). At the same time, she is truly fearsome, often being associated with blood and vengeance. For Ezili Dantò, protecting the abused and oppressed means enacting vengeance upon those who hurt them.

Additionally, she is mute. This aspect of her identity is thought to be connected to the unheard and often silent suffering of enslaved Black women (Kingsbury and Chesnut 2019, 225). More than a spirit, Ezili Dantò is a spiritual representation of the horrors of enslavement, punishment, and rape, and a manifestation of the suffering and unrealized dreams of enslaved women.

Overall, though, the depictions and characterizations of Ezili Dantò are rooted in the suffering and oppression of enslaved Black women. Her characterization as an angry, vengeful, maternal, and strong woman all serve as a way for Black women to regain their freedom and independence.

21st Century Witch Hunts in India & Kenya
By Samuel A Milberg

Dalit women (low class) face many problems such as inequitable education, low economic standings, and poor living conditions making them prime targets for sexual assault and many other atrocities.[3] However, many Dalit women who go against these atrocities are then said to be witches and face trial and even worse outcomes due to this. Another reason for this is land disputes of, “Childless widows who have property rights, which will pass on their nearest male relative after their death,” where males could easily accuse women of being witches to skip the line of inheritance.[4] This allows for constant preying on these Dalit women who do not have the tools to fight against these accusations leading them to be classified as witches.

The troubles once being classified as a witch only intensify because of what the higher classes feel entitled to do these women. For one woman she, “was allegedly branded a witch, stripped, beaten up mercilessly and made to eat human excreta,” which by all ideas is a senseless and demoralizing act before being eventually murdered.[5] This is only one example of what these women face for senseless accusations that are only executed against these women due to their family's social status in the caste system. India has allowed modern-day witch-hunting to be a common practice based on unscientific ideas and overall suppression of disadvantaged families based on the Caste system.

Called the “tropical Macau of sex and prostitution,” the city began to become home to specialized Chinese sexoscapes, which are venues where Chinese women cater to the sexual entertainment and desires of both local and Chinese men (Ndjio, 1004). This made native Duala sex workers feel threatened since they ran most of the sex venues in the city. To try to encourage resistance of these Chinese migrant sex workers, local sex workers began to refer to the Chinese women as “bitchwitches” who had occult powers.

Local Women Resist 

This main form of resistance started when local men specifically became more interested in the exoticism of Chinese sex. The Chinese women they were interested in were referred to as “Shanghai beauties” since they came from Shanghai or the Shanghai region and deliberately participated in commercialized sex activities to make a living in Africa (Ndjio, 371). Starting in 2007, different newspapers in Cameroon were talking about how the invasion of cheap Chinese sex was causing black bodies to become less visible in the local sex market. Specifically, in the district of Akwa in the center of Douala, Chinese migrant women had developed a strong hold on it due to their low prices that appealed to the poor local city dwellers (Ndjio, 374-375). Some Douala-based newspapers in 2008 began to echo rumors about a middle-aged local man who reportedly got stuck in the sexual organs of a young Chinese woman with whom he had had sexual intercourse (Ndjio, 376). Around the same time, another man had allegedly died after having sexual intercourse with a Chinese sex worker. The local women used these events to dramatize their negative perceptions of their Chinese counterparts. They made claims that the Shanghai beauties were putting a magical potion in their intimate parts, which was why they were faring better in the prostitution business than the local women (Ndjio, 377). It was also believed that any careless man who took the risk of having sex with dangerous Chinese women could be bewitched. 

Within Ndjio’s research about transnational sex labor, he interviewed Cameroonian and Chinese sex workers about the idea of Chinese women being witches. A 26-year old Cameroonian woman called La Douce explained occultism in Douala saying that, while the locals are also involved in occultism like the Chinese women, the Chinese have superior magical power compared to them (Ndjio, 377). There is a perception conveyed here that local women believed that Chinese magic far surpassed their own and that the greatest magicians were from the eastern world. Additionally, La Douce uses Chinese popular culture as evidence of the power of Chinese magic (Ndjio, 378). She also argued that the black magic utilized by Chinese women was used specifically to make themselves successful in their businesses (Ndjio, 378). In the case of sex work, they are able to use magic to attract men to them and make sure they could never leave them.  Another woman named Doudou Etoile explains in her interview that she believed people could get fetishes from local witch doctors that would protect their turf against the Chinese invasion (Ndjio, 378). Ndjio also interviewed some Chinese sex workers as well but none of the six admitted to being involved in occultism (Ndjio, 378). 

Truly Witches or Not?

It’s not totally clear if the local women truly believed in the occult powers of the Chinese sex workers or if the Chinese women themselves were aware of the perception of occult magic. Many of the women immigrating from Shanghai were illiterate and many of the traditional occult arts that were available in China were in the form of modern textbooks (Junqueira, 1072). These women may not have had the means to read textbooks such as the Compendium or Secret Book that were published in China (Junqueira, 1081). Additionally, these books were published during the Republican era of China from 1911 to 1949. The Communist party thought of these occult writings as fallacies and when they took control of China in 1949, they most likely carried this belief with them. So, about two generations later, it would make sense that these Chinese migrants in Douala may not have even believed in occult magic, if they had even learned about it at all.

With local women, there’s a mixture of interpretations as to why they targeted their Chinese counterparts. On the one hand, they may have actually believed that the occult powers of the Chinese were stronger than their own. Chinese migrants had brought with them herbal medicines and aphrodisiac products since before the increased presence of Chinese women in the sex industry (Ndjio, 1005). Considering the sexual impotence that local women claimed would be the downfall of any man who had sex with a Chinese woman, these medicines may have been seen as witchcraft by the local populations. On the other hand, these accusations of witchcraft could have been purely a method of othering the Chinese. As Ndjio states, “occult accusations are instrumental in the attempt by marginalized or dominated groups to protect the national or local resources against the excessive ambition of immigrants or foreigners” (Ndjio, 379). He continues describing how the terms, “magic body” and “cursed sex” have contributed to the disenchantment of Chinese migrant sex workers since their sought after oriental “magic bodies” now have the reputation of ending in “cursed sex,” with misfortune ensuing for the men they provide services for (Ndjio, 380). This “sex war” wasn’t just about sex, but the whole economic distrust of Chinese migrants who were invading Cameroon. Depicting Chinese migrant sex workers as occultists or magicians dismisses their success in the transnational sex trade and further extends to all Chinese migrants as their influence continues to grow in Cameroon. What can be said for sure is that accusations of witchcraft and occultism were ways for the local women of Douala to cope with what to them seemed to be a Chinese invasion on their businesses and livings.

Papua New Guinea

By Graham Ross

Why Papua New Guinea Still Hunts Witches

While most cultures look at the news of a witch hunt as a surprise, in Papua New Guinea, they are so common that they don't even make it on the daily news.[5] The witch hunts that take place usually end with the accused being tortured or murdered. These are still around to this day as a result of their cultural beliefs and practices. Richard Eves, an anthropologist and researcher at the Australian National University, claims their "cultural belief system about illness, death, and misfortune predisposes people to look for scapegoats for who is responsible [for causing it]."[6] Whenever these villages start to speculate about the death, illness, or cause of an event, they turn to alternative explanations. It is this reasoning that caused the men in the village in the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea to suspect the six-year-old girl to be connected with the man's illness.  

Unfortunately, most cases go uninvestigated by police "despite the introduction of the death penalty for witch-hunting in 2013."[7] The death penalty was instituted after 20-year-old Kepari Leniata was accused of using witchcraft to kill a young boy.[8] She would be burnt alive as hundreds of people looked on.  Her case is only one out of the few cases that have been brought to prosecution, while the rest go unsolved.