Geschiere, 2003

Witchcraft as the Dark Side of Kinship: Dilemmas of Social Security in New Contexts
Author(s): Peter Geschiere

Source: Etnofoor, Vol. 16, No. 1, KINSHIP (2003), pp. 43-61
Published by: Stichting Etnofoor
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25758044
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Witchcraft as the Dark Side of Kinship
Dilemmas of Social Security in New Contexts
Peter Geschiere, University of Amsterdam
ABSTRACT One of the more disconcerting discoveries during my field-work among the Maka in
Southeast Cameroon was that my spokesmen (and -women) saw witchcraft (djambe) as given with
kinship (bjel). The most dangerous attacks come 'from inside the house' (djambe-le-ndjaw) and
witches are supposed to have a special hold over their relatives. The question for this article is how
this link between witchcraft and kinship is affected by the general increase of scale of relations. I
try to show, with the help of observations from subsequent fieldwork in Cameroon and examples
from recent literature on other parts of Africa, that under the modem changes kinship has to bridge
ever greater distances, both spatially and socially: the growing distance between villages and cities;
the growing inequalities between elites and their poorer relatives. Striking is that in these contexts
people are increasingly speculating about the possibility that witchcraft is reaching beyond the
limits of kinship. Kinship terminology has to bridge such distances that it seems to be stretched to
a breaking point. Is the general concern about witchcraft running wild related to this feeling that
kinship is under a heavy strain?
One of the more disconcerting discoveries - disconcerting for me at least - during my

fieldwork among the Maka of Southeast Cameroon was how closely my spokesmen (and
women) associated 'witchcraft' (djambe) with kinship (bjel).1 'Witches' were supposed
to have a special hold over their relatives and everyone agreed that the djambe le njaw
('witchcraft of the house') was the most dangerous one. On my return from the field I
discovered that I should not have been that surprised since the link between kinship and
witchcraft is documented in many studies of other parts of Africa.2 Still this more or less
self-evident association of witchcraft with kinship raises intriguing questions as to the
everyday meaning of kinship in these societies. It could suggest that kinship has been all
too easily equated with solidarity, as many anthropologists (or anthropologically minded
social scientists) tend to do. A parallel question is whether it has not too easily been
characterized as a 'traditional' force of stagnation, for instance by impatient development
experts. In this article I propose to focus on one aspect, that may help to arrive at a more
nuanced view of the everyday role of kinship: the issue of how this link with witchcraft has
been affected by the rapid increase of scale of kinship relations under modern changes.
For me, it were especially developments in the 1990s - among the Maka, but also in
ETNOFOOR, XVI(l) 2003, pp. 43-61 43
other parts of Cameroon where I worked subsequently - that were quite revealing in this
respect.
Authors of widely different backgrounds - anthropologists, but also development
experts, artists and economists - emphasize the resilience of kinship in Africa, despite
deep and continuing change. In many contexts kinship relations continue to bridge new
distances and new inequalities: the distance between urbanites and their 'brothers' who
have remained in the village; the new inequalities which often surpass the traditional
bounds, also in societies that were already acquainted with deeply engrained hierarchies
(see Geschiere & Gugler 1998). However, it is clear also that this continuous stretching of
kinship relations - people's talent for 'discovering' relatives who can serve as footholds
in new surroundings - puts kinship under heavy strain. New elites dread the pressure of
their 'brothers' in the village who want them to redistribute from their new wealth - all
the more so, since there seems to be no limit to those who claim to be 'brother'. Villagers,
from their side, tell horror stories about urbanites who tend to 'forget' their village of birth
(of course, such stories mainly serve to emphasize that such neglect is in the end severely
punished by life itself). Moreover, it remains to be seen whether the new generations of
urbanites, who often do not even speak the language of their region, will still be prepared
to accept the notion that they still 'belong' in the village and to honour the villagers'
claims that follow from such ideas of belonging. The question is what all this means for
the ways in which kinship is linked to witchcraft?
It might be tempting to relate this stretching (over-stretching?) of kinship to the popular
obsession in many parts of the continent that witchcraft seems to run wild, and to the
desperate search for new sanctions in order to contain it since older sanctions seem no
longer to work (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Geschiere 1997; Bastian 1993). However, it
remains to be seen - certainly if one wants to avoid simplistic functionalist explanations -
how exactly changes in the spheres of kinship and witchcraft influence each other.
The continuing resilience of kinship is often - notably in development studies -
interpreted as constituting some sort of safety net on which people in the more modern
sectors of society can fall back in times of need. Central in this line of thought was
Goran Hyden's by now famous notion of the 'economy of affection' - his term for the
village subsistence economy that, supposedly, still provided an exit option, not only for
Africa's 'uncaptured peasantry' but also for elite persons in the city, if the market economy
became all too disadvantageous to them.3 Hyden's idea that even more prosperous elites
in the African cities feel obliged to maintain relations with their village of origin - and
that considerations of social security play a crucial role in this context - does still hold
for many parts of the continent. However, there is good reason to wonder whether the
economy of affection is indeed such a safe haven - or even whether it can still offer any
kind of social security. There are increasing signs that, on the contrary, the village and the
syndrome of belonging are becoming a heavy drain on people's resources and initiatives.
Already in the 1970s, the Maka young men I frequented in Yaounde (Cameroon's capital
city) spoke with such fear about the village, as a place full of jealousy and dangers, that
an expression like 'economy of affection' risked to acquire cynical overtones. In the face
44
of the subsequent Structural Adjustment restrictions and decreasing expenditures in the
public sector, romanticizing kinship and the security it is supposed to offer can easily go
beyond innocence: it can serve as some sort of an excuse - as an argument to play down
the often disastrous effects of all these cuts in the formal sector.
A take on kinship through its link with witchcraft might provide a more balanced
view, precisely because it highlights internal tensions which are crucial to understand
the impressive dynamics of kinship (and witchcraft) in modern settings. I will first try
to sketch - with the help of a few examples from my first stints of field-work among
the Maka in the 1970s - how the link of kinship with witchcraft emerges from everyday
life. In the second part of the article I will try to bring out, in relation to more recent
developments and also by parallel examples from other parts of Africa, that this link can
help to understand how kinship's 'economy of affection' could turn so easily into a drain
instead of a safety net.
Witchcraft and kinship among the Maka
A few weeks after I had settled in 'my' house in the compound of the Presbyterian
catechiste, we - that is, the whole menagerie that had quickly grown around me: not
only my assistant and my cook, but also an assistant-assistant, an assistant-cook etcetera,
etcetera - had the honour of receiving regular visits from Madame Mendouga. This was,
indeed, an honour since she was at the time the greatest nkong (healer) of the whole
area, and I had already found out that if I wanted to study politics, I could hardly get
around djambe (witchcraft). As a good nkong, Madame Mendouga was supposed to be
an expert on this. From her side, it was clear that Mendouga was interested in having
a special relationship with a ntangue (white person).The Dutch priest who lived a few
villages away had already complained to me that this woman was constantly knocking at
his door. Frequenting white people was for her clearly some sort of status symbol. Most
onkong are eager to profit from any opportunity to show how special they are. After all,
their reputation has to be enhanced constantly.
Maybe this was also the reason why, when we - my assistant and me - met Mendouga
one day on the road before our house, she spontaneously invited us to come and attend a
visit she had to make. Normally onkong are quite secretive about their consultations for
obvious reasons - diagnosing a witchcraft case is a private thing - but she was clearly
willing to make an exception for me. I had bombarded her with questions about the
djambe; so why not come and see how she tried to deal with it? It turned out that she was
on her way to visit our friend Bayard,4 then a young man in his twenties, who had recently
been quite ill. We followed her to the house of Bayard's family, where we found him in
the salon, stretched out in an old bamboo chair, looking quite miserable. Mendouga sat
down, looked at Bayard and then told his brother to call together the whole family: all
his brothers, their wives, but also his old father (his mother had died already) and all the
children. When they all had gathered around Bayard's chair, Mendouga started talking in a
45
soft and apparently gentle voice. From what I could understand (and later on my assistant
translated further what she had said), she tried to re-assure Bayard (he would soon be all
right, he had to trust her etc.), but at the same time she was clearly threatening his relatives
around him: she had 'seen' already who was trying to bewitch the poor young man, and as
usual the attack came from close by. However, she would know where to find the culprits
and how to stop them... My assistant confirmed what I had understood: she was, indeed,
menacing the people 'inside', that she would attack them if they would not soon lift their
spell. After half an hour, she got up to leave. A little kid was sent out and returned with a
chicken for her. Before we parted, she giggled - she had a most weird way of giggling -
and said: 'Well I warned them. The boy will soon be better'. And, indeed, a few days later
Bayard passed our house with his dog and his spears, on his way to go hunting in the
forest, his favourite pass-time.5
To the Maka, djambe - now always translated as sorcellerie - is a key-notion that
evokes a rich and dynamic imaginary. As I tried to show elsewhere (Geschiere 1997),
it is a precarious undertaking to try and give a systematic summary of these djambe
conceptions. Indeed, one can hardly speak of a system here: Maka views on witchcraft
seem liable to constant change, re-interpretations and even new 'fashions'. It is precisely
their open character that can explain their surprising resilience and their capacity to graft
themselves upon modern processes of change. However, there are a few core conceptions,
which emerge, time and again, be it in quite different forms and expressions. Basic is the
frightening image of the sjoumbou, the nightly meeting of the mindjindjamb (lit. 'those
who have the djambe'). Anybody can try to get a djambe which is supposed to live in
one's belly. But only some (men as often as women) take the trouble to develop it. Those
are the true mindjindjamb. At night, when they seem to be sleeping, their djambe leaves
their body and flies off along the tande idjambe (the cobwebs of the djambe) to meet their
fellow-witches at the sjoumbou. There they stage horrible parties. There is sex involved
in the sjoumbou image, only it is a reversal of what happens in the everyday world: men
make love to other men and 'even' women to women. But much more central is the image
of eating (de): the witches stage huge cannibalistic banquets. What makes the sjoumbou
especially frightening is that it is about the eating of kin.6 Each witch has to take his/her
turn in offering a relative who is then devoured by their companions. The next day the
victim will fall ill and start to fade away. Only the timely intervention of the nkong, who
can 'see' what the witches are cooking up, fall upon them and force them to give up their
prey, can save the victim. Thus, the betrayal of kin is at the very centre of the djambe
representations. Djambe is so frightening because it forces people to realize that there is
jealousy and aggression in the very bossom of the family.7 To the Maka, kinship should
be the main basis - not to say the only one - of trust and solidarity. Djambe highlights,
however, that this very intimacy is at the same time a deadly danger. This is why, as in
the case of Bayard's quite innocent affliction, the first culprits always have to be sought
'inside'.
This core image of the mindjindjamb extraditing their own people to occult threats
from the outside world (the other witches) has a wide array of elaborations. Witches are
46
often supposed to be desperate because they have built up a 'debt' to their sjoumbou
companions. They have to take their turn in offering a relative, but sometimes a witch can
refuse to do so; then the witches will fall upon him/her. Thus when Mekokpoam - who
had the reputation of dabbling in the djambe - suddenly died, his brother's son told me
with tears in his eyes that he had become a kind of martyr. Clearly he had refused to go
on betraying his own people. Therefore the witches had fallen upon him and devoured
him instead. And, as always among the witches, it will be then a sudden death: innocent
people who are attacked will linger away, so that there is still time to bring them to the
nkong; but among the witches it is a matter of win or die. Indeed, my friends talked often
with some horror of the utter loneliness of a witch when he is attacked by his fellows. As
a Maka proverb says 4a witch has no brother, no father, no kin'. Witchcraft is the betrayal
of kinship. Thus when a witch refuses to honour his obligations and is attacked by his
fellows, there is no one who will stand beside him.
The inherent link with kinship is also a core element in the story - a kind of timeless
myth - that people told me to explain how djambe had come to live among men.8
One day, Man, hunting in the forest, found djambe between the roots of a giant tree. Djambe said
to him, 'Give me a little meat from your booty'. Man gave him some. On this day he killed many
more animals. And this continued. Every day, Man gave a little meat to djambe, and he returned
with his game-bag fuller than ever.
This made his wife suspect something. One day she followed him secretly into the forest. She
saw him kneel beside a giant tree and speak to djambe. When he had left, she approached djambe
herself and asked it: 'Who are you?'
Djambe answered: 'Do you really want to know? Then crouch down, spread your legs, and I
will show you who I am. I will make you rich too.' Woman, jealous of man's success, crouched
down, spread her legs and, hop, djambe jumped inside into her belly. Thus, woman brought
djambe into the village.
From this day on, djambe in the belly of the woman demanded meat to eat. Woman gave it all
the meat man brought back from hunting, but it was not enough. Djambe forced her to kill all
the animals in the compound - goats, porks and chicken - but it was still not enough. Finally she
had to give him her own children, one by one.
Thus, djambe came to live amongst men, thanks to the greed and jealousy of woman.
This story, like any myth, allows for many readings and interpretations. There is a clear
gender bias, strongly reminding of Adam-and-Eve. Yet most of my informants would
finish the story by adding a proverb saying 'Women may have been the first to go out (that
is, leave their bodies), but men were soon to follow' - meaning that women may have a
certain priority in the djambe world, but that men soon learnt their way in this domain as
well.
Another implication is that djambe can be used in a positive way. In the story above,
it brings Man's success as a hunter - no mean thing since this was one of the main
marks of prestige in the old order. Indeed, there are many more examples that djambe
can be canalized and thus used in a more constructive way: the djambe idjouga (magic of
authority) that makes the elders prevail in the village palavers; or the djambe of riches,
that is supposed to be the secret of the present-day nouveaux riches. Only after Woman
47
brought it into the village - that is, within the sphere of kinship - did djambe exhibit its
basic instinct: the devouring of Woman's own people. Therefore, the central theme of this
myth seems to be, again, the close link with kinship: djambe stands for aggression from
inside - its basic drive is to eat kin. This is why, as said, the djambe le njaw (witchcraft of
the house) is the most dangerous one.
In some respect the nkong seems to be the exception in this line of thought. People
always emphazise that (s)he should be an outsider, not someone from within the family.
Onkong can only heal outside their own family; they should rather keep their distance
from their own relatives, since their powers could be dangerous to the latter. However, in
other respects the link between witchcraft and kinship is very direct in their case as well.
Onkong are supposed to be able to heal only because they themselves are deeply involved
with djambe. Indeed, they are described as some sort of super-witches; one informant
even said they were mindjindjamb 'who had beaten all records'. Thus, they are a striking
example that it is possible to canalize djambe in order to use it in a constructive way; but at
the same time they highlight the relativity of such more positive uses of djambe. Onkong
themselves will always emphasize that their professeur who helped them to develop their
djambe, bound them with terrible 'interdictions' (itsi) to use their powers only to heal and
never to kill. Yet, people are never so sure of this: the nkong has an extremely powerful
djambe - this is why (s)he can heal - and, therefore, there is always the danger that the
basic instinct of the djambe will break through: that is, to kill one's own kin. Indeed, many
rumours about onkong make the link with kinship in an even more direct way. Acquiring
the 'second pair of eyes' is a basic step in their initiation into djambe since it is this 'second
pair' that enables the onkong to 'see' what the witches are doing and to know where to
find them. But people whisper that a nkong only received this gift from his/her professeur
by offering a relative as a counter-gift. The nkong can only heal because (s)he has killed;
significantly, it is the betrayal of one's own kin that is crucial for one's initiation into the
djambe.
The link with witchcraft is an integral part of the way kinship is lived in everyday life.
As far as the Maka are concerned - and probably also for other groups in the forest area of
southern and eastern Cameroon - it is difficult to maintain that witchcraft is a counterpoint
to kinship (as many anthropologists of older and more recent generations tend to do).9
Witchcraft seems rather to be part and parcel of the kinship order.10
Kinship/witchcraft and new inequalities: les elites exterieures
The close link between kinship and witchcraft is certainly not only present within the
villages. On the contrary, it is surprisingly relevant also for understanding the relations to
the outside world and, more in general, the ways in which the Maka have become involved
with modern changes.
Another unexpected outcome of the first months of my fieldwork was that in order
to understand leadership at the local level, I had to look outside the village. One of my
48
reasons for settling in this part of the East was that a new co-operative - the ZAPI - had
just started to build up a new structure in this area for a more participatory involvement
of the local farmers with the selling of their main cash crops (cocoa and coffee). The co
operative's staff asked me to do a few reports for them since they foresaw special problems.
Certainly in those days, such a more participatory approach was a very welcome exception
within the extremely hierarchical and authoritarian structure of the one-party state (a
direct inheritance of the centralist French administration of colonial days). However, the
co-operative's officials showed clear signs of frustration, since in their view there was
an absolute lack of leadership at the local level. Indeed, even the villagers themselves
complained about such a lack. Such complaints had a clear historical background. Until
the colonial conquest (1905-1910) these were highly segmentary societies without any
central authority above the village level. The present-day chiefs (chefs de village and chefs
de canton) are clearly colonial constructs and this drastically circumscribed their authority.
The village elders, in contrast, were seen by the co-operative as too 'traditional' to figure as
helpful counterparts. And other leadership positions as well were constantly undermined
by the strong levelling forces - the link between jealousy and witchcraft, the segmentary
impact of the local kinship order - that deeply marked (and still mark) everyday life in
the villages. Generally, the strong emphasis on a basic equality (that is, a basic equality
between all adult men)11 made it quite difficult to find local spokesmen that could speak
on behalf of the village, let alone play a commanding role in the execution of projects
people had agreed upon.
To my surprise, however, more substantial leader figures soon turned up once the co
operative started to execute a few pilot projects in the village: these were the persons which
the villagers at the time indicated as nos evolues (a term that is a quite special remnant
of French colonial discourse) and who are nowadays often called nos elites exterieures:
the 'sons of the village' who made their career in the cities and who had thus attained
positions of wealth and power that clearly fell outside the local order. In Makaland in the
1970s, these concerned mainly civil servants and politicians who, in the 1960s, due to
their school certificates (at the time at most a few years of secondary school), had made
an unexpectedly rapid career with the abrupt Africanization of the public service. For the
villagers these new elites were the obvious points of contact in the unpredictable world
outside: they could help young men to get scholarships or jobs; they could defend people
who had run into difficulties with the authorities; they could attract government facilities
or development projects to the village and so on. This broker position provided them
with clear authority vis-a-vis the villagers. Indeed, they seemed to be the only persons
who could make the villagers honour certain arrangements made with, for instance, the
co-operative.
Over the last decades, several authors have emphasized the continuing involvement or
urbanites with the village in many parts of Africa.12 Daniel Aronson's notion of a 'rural
urban continuum' still seems to hold in many contexts (Aronson 1971). Often, urbanites
do not make a definitive choice between the village and the city. It is clear that their
career possibilities lie in the city. But it is as clear that, for various reasons - varying from
49
emotional commitment to considerations of social security or political ambition - they feel
they have to remain involved with the village of birth. Recent processes of democratization
have intensified this involvement (see below and also Geschiere & Nyamnjoh 2000). This
continuing commitment of urban elites to the village of origin seems to bridge, at least to
some extent, the new inequalities and the new distance between city and countryside.
However, as is only to be expected, this new extension of kinship relations brings a
similar expansion of the scope of witchcraft. Indeed, also in this context, the close link
between kinship and witchcraft highlights the deep ambivalence of the continuing relations
between urban elites and village. These relations are not only marked by continuing
commitment but also by deep jealousy and constant dissatisfaction on the part of the
villagers because their 'brothers' are not really sharing their new wealth with their kin.
No wonder that in recent days precisely these relations prove to be a hotbed of witchcraft
accusations and rumors. It is the combination of intimacy (after all, the new elites are still
kin) and distance (they live mostly far away, in the city) that gives the kinship-witchcraft
link new aspects in these relations.
My first confrontation with such ambivalences was when I tried to understand why
Monsieur Tsieng, at the time the most important evolue of the village where I lived, was
so severe and distanced during his short visits to the village. It turned out there was a
whole story to behind all this.
In 1971, when I first came to live in the village of Bagbeze II, Monsieur Tsieng, who had started his
career as a teacher, occupied an important position at the schools inspectorate in Abong-Mbang,
the capital of the Haut-Nyong (the departement to which Bagbeze II belonged). Even more
important was his impressive accumulation of political posts: maire adjoint of the municipality,
chairman of the sous-section of the one-party (at the time the UNC) and various other posts in the
party hierarchy. Especially these political positions made him the most prestigious elite person
of Bagbeze II. However, all the villagers - including his own relatives - complained of his utter
lack of hospitality. Tsieng had constructed his own house in the village which stood, however,
somewhat isolated at the village's outskirts. And, even during his short visits he seemed to do
anything to stop villagers from coining to visit him.
After a few weeks, people began to explain to me that there was more behind his distanced attitude.
A few years earlier, Tsieng had had serious problems in his job (there were even rumors that he
had been accused of certain malversations). Therefore, he had decided to retire temporarily to
his village of birth, and to take up again his old profession as teacher there. However, only a few
months after he had settled in the village, he was afflicted with a vague but stubborn illness. The
nature of his complaints were not very clear: he suffered from continuous over-fatigue and he
had himself declared unfit for work for almost two years. For my spokesmen there was no doubt
that this strange illness was caused by witchcraft. And it seemed that Tsieng himself agreed with
this diagnosis. At first he had visited a few Western doctors. But when this brought no relief he
began to frequent one nkong after the other. Finally he recovered after he had been treated by a
nkong from the land of the Djem (more than 100 kms away - for my informants this was really
far out into the bush). But the nkong had insisted that he should leave the village and never settle
there again for longer periods of time.
The villagers who told me this story agreed about the kind of miedou (charged objects) Tsieng had
been attacked with: the witches must have planted koulekoak (a new medicine that had created
a real panic in the village a few years ago) in a narrow pathway behind Tsieng's house. He had
50
tramped on it and in this way the koulekoak had entered his body. It would certainly have killed
him if the nkong of the Djem had not compelled the witches to break their spell. People were
less sure of the identity of these witches. However, all agreed that they should be looked for
among Tsieng's close relatives, because it was their jealousy that could get to him. Some hinted
that Nkwoud, Tsieng's cousin - generally known as a drunkard, who wasted away all the income
from his small cocoa-plantations and also his wife's meagre earnings - had boasted that he had
taught his arrogant relative a lesson. Some time earlier, when the sous-prefet (DO) had come
to visit the village, Tsieng had invited the latter for a big dinner at his house. However, he had
shown his poorer relatives, Nkwoud included, the door. And everybody knows how dangerous it
is to humiliate a close kinsman.
Later on, I was to hear many more stories like this. And the conclusion was always the
same, at least if my spokesman was an elite person: 'We have to keep our distance from
the village.' Striking is that, throughout the forest region, new elites will use the same,
pregnant expression to explain this: they will say that they are afraid 'to be eaten' by the
villagers. The verb 'eat' (in Maka de) has heavy connotations. In this context it refers to
the elites' fear of being sponged on by their poorer 'brothers' in the village. But there is
also a direct reference to the world of the witches and their obsession with the 'eating' of
kin.13 Stories like the one of Tsieng's mysterious illness are told to confirm this danger of
'being eaten'.
Thus, the continuing link between kinship and witchcraft has starkly contradictory
effects on the relation between villagers and 'their' elites exterieures. On the one hand,
kinship tends to affirm the link of the urban elites to the village of birth. And it is true
that most elites continue to honor this relationship. Yet, on the other hand, kinship is
intrinsically linked with witchcraft - it is precisely from the intimacy of kinship that the
most dangerous witchcraft attacks come -, and this serves to keep these elites at bay.
This indicates the deeper background to the constant complaints of the villagers - again
not only in the Maka area, but throughout the forest region - that their elites neglect the
village. As my neighbour used to say: 'They do not even build a house in their own village.
How can we ever have development here with such stingy elites?'
Many of my Maka informants were eager to point out that, in this respect, there was a
striking contrast with the Bamileke elites from the Grassfields in the western part of the
country who are believed to be in control of the national economy. Those Bami elites would
at least take their relations to the village seriously. The opposition between the supposedly
egalitarian forest societies (whose political leaders are now prominent in the state) and
the more hierarchical Grassfields societies, with their economic dynamism, has become a
major issue in Cameroonian politics. And, indeed, there are striking contrasts, even though
one might regret that these contrasts are now 'ethnicized' - not to say 'primordialized' -
in everyday political language. In the Grassfields, chieftaincy has a long history, creating
a highly hierarchical configuration. In the forest societies, where chieftaincy is to a large
extent a colonial creation, there is instead a strong ideological accent on the equality
of each adult man (even though, as said, this egalitarian ideology goes together with
marked inequalities of gender and age). Elsewhere we tried to show that the implications
51
of the kinship/witchcraft complex are, indeed, very different for these societies (Fisiy &
Geschiere 1991; see also Geschiere 1997). In the Grassfields, the chief has still sufficient
moral authority to offer the new elites highly valued opportunities to have their new wealth
'whitewashed' by dedicating it to the chief and thus make it accepted in the local context.
In contrast to the forest societies with their segmentary traditions, Grassfields chiefs can
thus offer the new rich protection against the jealousy of their former fellow villagers.
Indeed, my Maka informants emphasized time and again that at least these Bami elites
were not afraid to invest in the village and to 'bring development'. The Maka elite would,
in contrast, do anything to keep their distance. The interest of this contrast is that it
highlights that, in both cases, the ambiguities of the kinship/witchcraft complex do not
remain restricted to the village. On the contrary, with the extension of kinship relations
due to the emergence of a new urban elite, this complex acquires new aspects. It serves
to remind 'our sons in the city' that they still belong to the village. Yet in the forest
this message has highly ambiguous implications: the close association of kinship with
witchcraft reminds the elites at the same time of the need to keep their distance.
The funeral as a climax in the ambiguities of belonging
In many parts of Africa, funerals constitute a high point in the enactment of urbanites'
belonging to the village of origin. In Yaounde or Douala, as in smaller towns in the southern
parts of Cameroon - and also in other African cities - many people still see it as a sign of
social disgrace if one is buried in the city. Despite the fact that both Douala and Yaounde
have grown over the last decades into cities with millions of inhabitants, cemeteries remain
very small. The idea that a funeral should take place 'at home' - meaning in the village -
is still self-evident to many. Lately, this emphasis on burying 'at home' has even been
reinforced due to the impact of democratization. One of the more unexpected outcomes of
the long-awaited political liberalization of the 1990s - a true breakthrough after the stifling
authoritarianism of one-party regimes, prevailing in many African countries until then -
was that it triggered a true obsession with issues of 'autochthony' and 'belonging' through
out the continent. In retrospect this was quite logical. The re-introduction of multi-party ism
meant that elections once more had real political effects, instead of being just symbolical
expressions of support, as under one-party regimes. But this made questions like 'who
can vote where?' and even more importantly 'who can stand candidate where?' of crucial
importance. In many areas local groups feared to be outvoted by more recent immigrants,
especially if these were economically more successful. In this context the funeral assumed
renewed importance as the ultimate test of where one 'belongs'. Samuel Eboua, one of
the grand old men of Cameroonian politics, summarized this very poignantly in Impact
Tribune (1995,005:14), in a special issue on minorities, autochthony and citizenship:
Every Cameroonian is an allogene anywhere else in the country then where his ancestors lived
... and where his mortal remains will be buried. Everybody knows that only under exceptional
circumstances a Cameroonian will be buried elsewhere (translation PG).
52
In the new style of politics, inaugurated by democratization and the return of (relatively)
open elections, these are very heavy terms. Especially in the southern parts of Cameroon,
politics seems to be increasingly dominated by efforts of local populations, who style
themselves 'autochthons', to exclude more recent immigrants - allogenes, or in Pidgin
come-no-goes - and to deny them their rights as Cameroonian citizens to vote or to
stand candidate outside their area of origin. As we emphasized elsewhere (Geschiere and
Nyamnjoh 2000), such autochthony movements gain all the more momentum since they are
often actively supported by the Cameroonian government. Like in other African countries,
the Cameroonian regime, in its struggle to hold on to power, seems to see these movements
as a welcome canal to try and divide the opposition, and to circumvent multi-partyism.14
As the quotation from Eboua above already indicated, there is thus little left of the old
ideal of nation-building and the consolidation of national citizenship, that was so strongly
propagated in the 1960s and 1970s, both by the national leadership and development
experts, as a precondition for attaining development. The new shibboleths have become
'protection of minorities', c.q. 'indigenous peoples'. Such a political metamorphosis is, of
course, closely intertwined with the equally dramatic turn-around in development policies
towards the end of the 1980s, from a highly statist approach to 'bypassing the State',
decentralization, and support to NGO's. These new development ideals similarly serve to
make belonging and the exclusion of 'strangers' into hot political issues. Indeed, there
seems to be a true conjuncture of different but converging local, national and global trends
that reaffirm struggles over belonging and exclusion.15
It is this configuration that gives additional weight to the idea of 'burying-at-home', as a
celebration of belonging that has become all the more urgent in the new political context.16
Again, kinship - the claim to, as Eboua puts it, the land 'where [your] ancestors lived' - is
at the centre of such concerns. And, again, its link with witchcraft, always highly present
during funerals, manifests itself in this new context. Yet, kinship is presented here in an
almost emaciated form; anybody who can claim 'autochthony' becomes kin over against
the allogene, the other who belongs elsewehere. And this serves to create new scope
for witchcraft accusations. Hyden's 'economy of affection' shows, indeed, remarkable
elasticity in such contexts, though it may present itself in forms that are less affectionate.
An interesting dissertation by Luc Mebenga (1991) on funerals among the Ewondo,
neighbours of the Maka in the forest area of Cameroon, shows how the continuing emphasis
on kinship and belonging can acquire special undercurrents in such a context. The starting
point of this thesis is how Mebenga himself, after suddenly receiving the tragic news of
his father's passing away, participated in the funeral, and how he, as an urbanite, became
involved in a long sequence of exchanges and rituals. The participation of urbanites in the
funeral 'at home' is, therefore, a central - be it somewhat implicit - concern in his thesis.
At the end he concludes:
Every Ewondo knows very well that, though one is allowed to leave one's natal village, coming
back to it - be it to live there or to be buried - is a moral obligation that no one can neglect. This
idea finds its concrete expression in the burying of the placenta of a newly bom child. This is
to remind the child that, even if he becomes a nomad (vagabond - sic), he should never forget
53
to return to the place where his placenta is buried. This act ties any Ewondo to his village, like
a child is tied to his mother by the umbilical cord. Indeed, this conception demands that every
Ewondo be buried in his village of origin so as to re-affirm this union forged by his birth. Even
the authorities respect nowadays this custom - which one finds nearly everywhere in Africa -
by facilitating the transportation of the corpse of all its civil servants to their village in order to
be buried there. This is one of the few customary norms that are still respected today (Mebenga
1991: 234, translation PG).
Mebenga sees the enduring commitment of urbanites to being buried in the village as a
highly positive sign indicating that there still remains something of the old emphasis on
the collectivity. While their socio-economic interests oblige urbanites to orient themselves
towards their new surroundings (the city), it is their 'spiritual interests' that make them
retain their links to 'the sacred place' of the village. And this is why they still want to be
buried in their native soil'... that does not move despite all social change' (ibid.:235).
However, during the public defence at the University of Yaounde - where I had the
honour, as one of the supervisors, to chair the jury - a quite different view on the funeral
'at home' came to the fore, notably from the interventions of the jury members who came
from the same area. Professor Marcien Towa congratulated the candidate on his courage
since everybody knew how difficult it was to return to the village for a funeral. Professor
Jean Mfoulou emphasized this aspect even more strongly: 'It is like this among us: anybody
who emerges has to excuse himself constantly with those who do not emerge'.17 And both
professors stressed that the funeral in particular was an occasion when the villagers could
make urban elites 'excuse themselves.' Many of my colleagues from the forest area told me
how they dreaded the moment of return, notably for a funeral. The wild behaviour, ritually
permitted, of certain relatives - notably the sister's sons of the deceased and his sons in
law18 - could easily be directed against urban visitors who are always reproached for not
sharing enough of their new riches. The funeral constitutes, indeed, an ideal moment for
the villagers to get even with their 'brothers' from the city.
The funeral is not only a high point in the acting out of the kinship organization,
but also of its corollary, witchcraft. Especially at the key-moment when the corpse is
put into the grave, there is often an upsurge of more or less open witchcraft accusation
by the bystanders. Normally, these accusation are directed against the surviving spouse
(especially against the widow when the deceased is a man - this is why the presence of an
important delegation from the widow's family at the funeral is often literally vital to her).
But nowadays, this can be also a precarious moment for urban elites, who can be accused
as well, if they are present. On the other hand, if urbanites do not show up during the
funeral 'at home' of a close relative, this can be easily interpreted as a sign of 'guilt' and
they may receive their 'punishment' - special rituals of 'revenge' - during a later visit.
This is one of the reasons why it is important for urbanites not to miss a funeral in the
village.
In the funeral-at-home, all the ambiguities of the kinship/witchcraft complex for urban
elites and their precarious belonging to the village come to the fore. Mebenga is certainly
right that the urbanites' remaining faithful to the idea of being buried 'at home' expresses an
54
ongoing commitment to the village and an emotional recognition of kinship. Yet kinship's
inherent link with witchcraft makes the funeral also a highly threatening moment to
them.
Witchcraft in Soweto: how to reconcile unknown relatives?
How stubborn the intertwinement of kinship, funeral and witchcraft is, can become
apparent from a study of a very different location on the African continent: Soweto,
the millions township of Johannesburg. It may seem that here the limits of Hyden's model
of the economy of affection have been reached. In Soweto, people have been the object of
an all too real process of proletarianizing. The large majority has since long lost its access
to land and is hardly ever returning to 'the' village. Indeed, many hardly know any more
where 'their' village is.19 Yet, Adam Ashforth's fascinating study (2000) of the existential
problems people face in such a context shows that the kinship/witchcraft complex remains
alive, even in the very different daily realities of Soweto.20
The book tells the story of a dramatic crisis in the life of Madumo, a young man from
Soweto who became a close friend of Ashforth (the latter is one of the very few social
scientists who undertook prolonged fieldwork in this huge township). A key moment in the
story is when Madumo gets embroiled in a fierce family conflict: after his mother's death
he is physically put out of the house by his brother and sister. Roaming from one place to
another - for some time he lives in extremely dangerous circumstances in Hillbrow, the
center of Jo-burg's night life - and finally landing in a miserable rented room, he becomes
ever more convinced that all his problems are due to his being bewitched. The book offers
a fascinating and quite shocking story of how Madumo becomes ever more entangled
in the vicious circles of witchcraft representations and practices. After long doubts and
deliberations with his friends (including Ashforth) he finally chooses a sangoma (healer)
in whom he has confidence. But the therapy prescribed by this specialist is not only
very expensive - Madumo has to invoke constantly Asforth's financial support - but also
physical exhaustive: it involves a daily purge through severe vomiting that makes Madumo
weaker and weaker.
Moreover, Madumo is plagued by constantly novel witchcraft fears and fantasies. Faced
with a new witchcraft threat, he believes that he has to look for protection with the Zionist
church of which he is a long-time member. But this environment seems to create new
occult dangers rather than offering protection. However, the heaviest pressure is exercised
by the 'ancestors', especially because of Madumo's uncertainty of how to placate them.
A major problem is that he does not know where to find the money for all the gifts and
sacrifices needed for this. But a more immediate issue is that he does not even know which
ancestor to address. His family ties are spread all over the countryside; he is not sure where
to find the descendants of which ancestors; and his sangoma and other advisers seem to
have different opinions as to which ancestor would be capable of lifting the curse that
makes him suffer so much. Until the very end of the book it is not sure whether Madumo's
55
half-hearted attempts have, indeed, succeeded in reconciling these elusive ancestors. Yet,
this does not weaken his firm conviction that all his problems stem from the fact that he
has neglected them.
As said, most people in Soweto are no longer in regular contact with the relatives in
the village. Like Madumo they have only a very vague idea of where these relatives -
often dispersed by the heavy pressure of Apartheid - live. Symptomatic is that, in general,
Sowetans no longer try to bury their dead 'back home' in the village. In fact, they stopped
doing so already several decades ago, also because they simply did not have the money
to do so. As a result, the township counts several huge graveyards, in contrast to many
African cities north of the Limpopo. Yet even here, where the custom to bury 'at home'
has become practically impossible, the ancestors - associated in a vague way with 'the
village' - continue to be a heavy burden. Indeed, although Ashforth's book is mainly
focussed on witchcraft and the question of how people can continue to believe in it, it
gives almost inadvertently a nightmarish image of how heavy the whole kinship/ancestor/
witchcraft complex weighs on a man who is trying to build his life under very difficult
circumstances.
In this sense Madumo's misfortunes recall the examples quoted above: the Cameroonian
young men in Yaounde who complain that le retour a la terre (the return to the land) - so
strongly recommended by the World Bank and the development establishment in general -
has become impossible for them since '.. Aes gens au village sont trop durs (these village
people are too harsh...)'; or the Ewondo elites who dread the obligatory return to the
village for a funeral at home. There are also clear parallels with yet another and again
quite different example: the tragic stories of James Ferguson (1999) about the misfortunes
and the humiliations of the Zambian mine labourers after the enduring copper-crisis
forced them to return and try to reintegrate themselves in their 'home' village. As said,
the situation in Soweto is different in many respects. Here the 'economy of affection'
of the village has long ceased to offer any real social security. The artificial character
of Apartheid's homelands - precisely created in order to sustain the myth that the urban
black masses had a 'home' where they 'really belonged' - is too blatant. It is true that even
in Cameroon or Zambia, it becomes ever more difficult for returnees to get access to land
in 'their' villages. But in South Africa this has long since become impossible. Yet even
here the village/ancestor/witchcraft complex continues to exercise a hold over people's
minds from which even urbanites who seem to have lost all contact with their rural origins
can hardly escape. The Soweto example shows how powerful the idea remains of what
Hyden calls 'the economy of affection', even under drastically changed circumstances.
Apparently, it can retain its power even in situations where it offers no substantial social
security at all. However, then it is no longer a safe refuge - was it ever so? - but rather a
heavy drain on people's meagre resources.
56
Conclusion
A take on kinship through witchcraft can serve as a good antidote against the tendency
to either romanticize kinship as a timeless safety net, or see it as a 'traditional' factor
of stagnation, impeding 'development'. As indicated in the introduction to this volume,
kinship played (and continues to play) a key role, as some sort of 'other', in the opposition
between tradition and modernity that has been central to modern thought. It is either
depicted as the traditional, constraining factor par excellence, or it is central to a nostalgic
image of a harmonious past. The examples above may have shown, on the one hand, how
mistaken the view of kinship as a force of stagnation can be: especially in its link with
witchcraft, kinship exhibits its own dynamics in interaction with changing situations. On
the other hand, the same examples indicate how dangerous a nostalgic romanticizing of
kinship can become, certainly when it influences development policies. As said, the idea
of the resilience of family - of the economy of affection, the village subsistence economy
or whatever term one may use - can easily serve as an excuse to justify harsh cuts and
'adjustments', whether 'structural' or not.
Looking at kinship through witchcraft can serve also - somewhat paradoxically - to de
exoticize kinship's resilience in many parts of Africa. The close link with witchcraft should,
after all, not be that surprising for generations of Westerners for whom psychoanalysis
has become an integral part of their spiritual luggage. As said, Freud's unmasking of
the family as a hotbed of primal aggression would not come as such a surprise in the
witchcraft imaginary of the Maka. My own shock when I discovered how self-evident
the intertwinement of kinship with witchcraft was to my Maka friends clearly indicated
that both notions had acquired quite fixed contours in my own thinking. Clearly, if one
wants to understand the resilience of both kinship and witchcraft under modern changes,
a more open interpretation of both notions is required. With the increase of scale of social
relations, kinship may be stretched into some sort of general autochthony identity; yet it
retains its inherent link with aggression-from-within and as such it remains a powerful
force also in rapidly changing contexts.
One of the riddles raised by the close conceptual linking of kinship and witchcraft is
how people can continue to live together despite terrible suspicions. As a Douala saying
puts it 'One has to learn how to live with one's witch' (de Rosny 1981). Or, as a very good
friend from Cameroon told me when I asked him whether he was not afraid to return to the
village: 'If my brother wants to kill me, what can I do against this?' Such statements reflect
the close conceptual link between witchcraft and kinship that still makes me uneasy. Yet,
they are also surprisingly relevant to everyday life in modern societies: they express the
realization that violence can come as much from inside as from the outside.
57
Notes
1. My first fieldwork in this area was in 1971 and since then I regularly return. Regarding the use
of the term 'witchcraft' in this text, it might be important to emphasize that this term has clear
disadvantages. This term - like sorcery or sorcellerie - is a somewhat distorting translation
of local notions that often have a much broader array of meanings. However, these western
terms have been appropriated on such a large scale in many parts of present-day Africa - public
debates on, for instance, the relation with kinship and social security are invariably waged in
these terms - that it seems futile to refuse to use them (see further Geschiere 1997 and in press
a; Ciekawy, D. and P. Geschiere 1998).
2. The link between witchcraft and kinship is, for instance, more or less implicitly present in
the classical anthropological studies of witchcraft from the 1950s and 1960s (Marwick 1965;
Turner 1954). However, due to the fact that these monographs focused explicitly on village
communities organized on the basis of kinship, the authors seem to take this link more or less
for granted. Maybe, it is precisely because more recent studies deal with relationships on a
broader scale that the close link of kinship with witchcraft comes clearer to the fore (see also,
for instance, Birgit Meyer 1999, on Ghana). Yet, there are clear variations in this respect. Other
authors stress that in the area where they worked there is no clear association of witchcraft with
kinship (see, for instance, Marja Spierenburg's recent thesis on Dande, Zimbabwe). Often this
concerns areas where kinship is no longer a central factor in the constitution of neighbourhoods.
Witchcraft may than rather be linked to locality instead of kinship, so that it is still everyday
intimacy that is supposed to be a hotbed for occult aggression.
3. See Hyden 1980 (see also Geschiere 1984 for an early critique of his 'economy of affection'
notion).
4. No pseudonym (since the whole affair took place already more than thirty years ago, I do not
think it is necessary to use any).
5. The whole story is a bit exceptional because mostly clients go and see a nkong in his (or her)
house. But Mendouga explained to me that this was only a light case. And since she knew
Bayard's family quite well and had to come to our village for other things in any case, she had
accepted to come and see him at his place. However, if it would turn out that it was more serious
than she thought, he would have to come to her house. Because there she had her 'mirror' and
all her other miedou (medicine).
6. In present-day Cameroon, the Maka have acquired a solid reputation for cannibalism. Indeed,
in their stories about pre-colonial confrontations between hostile groups (and also about the
conquest of the area by the Germans) cannibalism is a recurrent element. However, as the elders
emphasized to me, this was only possible in or after confrontations with strangers (= non-kin).
What makes the djambe and the sjoumbou so shocking is that it is about the eating of kin (see
further Geschiere 1997).
7. Eric de Rosny stresses the force of the same image for the Douala (in the coastal area of
Cameroon), as the very centre of their ewusu representations. Cf. also Philippe Laburthe
Tolra (1977) on the Beti in Cameroon's Central Province. Clearly, the Maka (and other African
societies) are not that exceptional in this respect. There are intriguing parallels here, for instance,
with the emphasis in psychoanalysis in Western societies that primal forms of aggression come
from within the family.
8. This story is certainly not special for the Maka. It is reported from several other groups from the
southern forest area of Cameroon (cf. Laburthe-Tolra 1977, Hebga 1979 and Mallart-Guimera
1981 on the Beti; Elizabeth Copet-Rougier 1986 on the Kako; Koch 1968 on the Badjoue).
9. Cf., for instance, Gluckman (1955) and van Binsbergen (2001).
10. Again, there are interesting parallels here with Western society. One of Freud's basic
contributions may have been to emphasize that aggression is not something penetrating into
58
the family from the outside, but rather primarily coming from inside and engrained in the very
structure of the family.
11. It may be important to emphasize that these are certainly not egalitarian societies; there are
marked and deeply institutionalized inequalities between genders and between generations.
Yet, for instance compared to the much more hierarchical chiefdoms of the Grassfields (in the
western parts of Cameroon), it is clear that the egalitarian ideology pervading the forest societies
allows at the most for more personal forms of leadership which depend on someone's personal
performance and can, therefore, be constantly undermined.
12. See Geschiere and Gugler 1998 and the literature quoted there.
13. See Bayart, notably 1989, on the rich array of meanings notions of 'eating' acquire in what he
terms 'the politics of the belly' in Africa (and elsewhere).
14. Against all expectations and despite the introduction of multi-partyism since 1990, President
Paul Biya, the former one party dictator, still succeeds to remain in the saddle. In the early 1990s
this was mainly due to large-scale rigging of elections. However, subsequently, his support to
autochthony movements contributed to a re-consolidation of his position. See on this idea of
a conjuncture of widely different factors - global, national and local ones - that all converge
in an intensification of struggles over belonging and exclusion, Geschiere and Nyamnjoh 2000
and Geschiere in press a.
15. In this context, there has been a marked change also in the forest area in the relations between
urban elites and village of origin in the forest area. Recently, especially under the impact of
democratization (but also due to the increased importance of commercial logging in the East
Province), even Maka elites have started to build houses in 'their' village, as an ostentatious
sign that they are prepared to take their belonging to the village seriously. Yet they continue to
see 'witchcraft' as a crucial problem in their relation to the village (see Geschiere in press b).
16. The new importance of the funeral 'at home' goes together with a marked proliferation of
funeral rituals - the elaboration of all sorts of 'neo-traditional' payments and practices - that
require ever more spectacular expenditure. Economist Celestin Monga (1995) speaks here of
une mauvaise gestion de la mort (a bad - or even evil? - management of death).
17. 'C'est comme 9a chez nous: celui qui emerge doit s'excuser constamment aupres de ceux qui
n'emergent pas'.
18. See Geschiere in press b.
19. Indeed, the Apartheid homelands which maintained at least for some of Soweto's people the
fiction of a continuing access to land, can be seen as some sort of conscious caricature by the
Apartheid regime of Hyden's model of an 'exit option' to the 'economy of affection'.
20. Ashforth's book is different from the literature quoted above. He presents it as 'not ... a
scientific treatise ... but rather as a story, particular and personal, drawn from life' (2000:vii).
The everyday problems of his main characters come across all the more vivid.
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Witchcraft as the Dark Side of Kinship: Dilemmas of Social Security in New Contexts

Author(s): Peter Geschiere

Peter Geschiere, University of Amsterdam

One of the more disconcerting discoveries - disconcerting for me at least - during my

ETNOFOOR, XVI(l) 2003, pp. 43-61 43

Witchcraft and kinship among the Maka

Kinship/witchcraft and new inequalities: les elites exterieures

The funeral as a climax in the ambiguities of belonging

Witchcraft in Soweto: how to reconcile unknown relatives?

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