AN OUTLANDISH CHARMER

In rural Africa, the power of the witch-doctor lives

on, writes Sousa Jamba ALTHOUGH I come of a middle-class Angolan family — my father was a teacher who owned a school until he disgraced himself by impregnating one of his pupils — the witch-doctor was a frequent caller at our house. Perhaps this was why my father was never appointed an assimilado: anyone who consulted a witch-doctor could not be Portuguese, even a black Portuguese.

I remember the outlandish figure with his paraphernalia: cowrie shells, horns, hyena skins and foul concoctions whose odour alone convinced many that the doctor, with his clean white coat . and stethoscope, was no match at all. He came at night, to avoid the spiteful gossip of neighbouring assimilados.

He came to help my sister Flora. She was hit on the head when she was four, and subsequently developed mental problems. She threw tantrums whenever crossed, and was often so moody that she refused to speak. Psychiatrists and other medical personnel were consulted to no avail. At 16 she became a complete recluse after a disagreement with her boyfriend, Enoch.

My father, who by then had been expel- led from the evangelical church of Angola and had formed with his friends his own church, which approved of drink and poly- gamy, called in the witch-doctor, Napoleao, whom the evangelical church regarded as the devil incarnate. My sister was by now refusing to eat or speak or leave her room.

Napoleao buried a live black chicken at our door. He then sprinkled some white liquid on her face, intoning an incantation none of us could understand. My sister recovered completely; she was accepted for medical school, spoke five languages, including Russian, and had a wonderful sense of humour. Unfortunately, the pow- er of the witch-doctor's charm was not indefinite: her husband recently shot her dead during a quarrel and then shot himself.

I told this story to a white doctor. He argued convincingly that her cure had been solely psychological. But I was only partly persuaded: coming from an environment where witchcraft is as inescapable as the weather, I cannot easily throw off the beliefs in which I was raised. As with most educated Africans, there is a confusion between what I feel and what I think. When I told a Nigerian medical student friend of mine that I was doing a piece about witchcraft for the Spectator, he grew agitated. `Please, don't let these white men think that we're still backward.'

But witchcraft is not unchanging: it moves with the times. Where once the witch-doctor demanded a chicken or yams as payment, he is now likely to ask for a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. In Zambia, the successful witch-doctor may have a Mercedes. Once he listened for the wisdom of the ancestors in a cowrie shell; now he is likely to use a Sony Walkman.

The influence of witchcraft in African life, even in modern towns, is all- pervasive. I spent my adolescence as a refugee in the slums of Lusaka and I decided, like most of my contemporaries, that the only route out of poverty was boxing. I joined a local club and trained very hard. Before my first competitive fight I consulted a witch-doctor, who told me to sleep with charcoal under my pillow and gave me a charm that looked like a dried chicken bone. As a result, I felt confident as I stepped into the ring, but I was knocked out in the first round. I believed afterwards that my opponent had consulted a better witch-doctor (but all the same I never stepped into the ring again).

At school, we had a nearby witch-doctor who specialised in the needs of pupils. He sold a special powder which we put on our palm. If a teacher then shook our hand, he would favour us. He also sold a powder which we put in vaseline and spread on our faces to make us attractive to girls. His most expensive product was called 'Bullet' which was supposedly an aphrodisiac herb. He sold school leavers a charm which, in addition to the standard bribe known as tea and an uncle's suit that has been used by a generation of job-hunters, would ensure the owner's success at interviews.

Many popular songs in Zambia concern witch-doctors. One criticises married women who collect from morgues water that has washed corpses. They believe that food cooked in this water will make their husands love them more than beer. Another is about a barren woman who goes to a witch-doctor who tells her to bring for a potion the heart of an ant and a white man's undecayed tooth. Home-loving men who do not go out drinking are believed to have been given hearts of rats to eat by their wives, the rat being a domestic creature.

Witchcraft is not confined to personal matters. All over Africa witch-doctors claim to be able to cure Aids, though it is doubtful whether they could recognise a case. In Nigeria, a group of witch-doctors think they have found a charm which could destroy apartheid, and are only awaiting permission from the Nigerian government to do so. During the 1979 Commonwealth conference in Lusaka, there was a rumour in the slums that Queen Elizabeth had come to get some witchcraft from Kenneth Kaunda, who is rumoured to be one of the strongest witches in Africa. His white handkerchief which he waves to symbolise peace is thought by many Zambians to be a powerful charm which protects him from his assailants. The same is true of all symbolic objects African leaders use. It was said that an American-supported coup against Julius Nyerere failed because his mother possessed a magical television screen able to monitor American troop movements.

However absurd these beliefs may appear, they have a practical effect on African lives and politics. The Katangan gendarmes had a woman who went naked into battle with a calabash on her head which was believed to divert all the bullets away from the men. The belief made them braver. Their opponents, on the other hand, were convinced that this effect could be negated by going themselves naked into battle: which some of them did.

In the Sixties, Alice Lenshina in Zambia claimed to have died four times. During one of her deaths, God told her to wipe evil off the face of the earth, and gave her the 'true' bible; she then saw Jesus on the bank of a river and he told her to start preaching. She exhorted her followers not to vote for UNIP, the ruling party. At Chinsali, her followers went into battle against the Zambian army believing them- selves invincible. Many were killed. Even the president's brother believed in her.

In Uganda now, a 26-year-old former prostitute, Alice Lakvvena, has heard a message from God to liberate the country from Yoweri Museveni, and leads the Holy Spirit Battalion who are persuaded they are immune to bullets. Nevertheless, she takes the precaution of having 30 bodyguards herself, though this seeming contradiction has not yet affected her support. Two thousand of her followers have been slaughtered. This is just to show how people claiming to have supernatural pow- ers can capture the minds of Africans.

Some churches in Africa have been obliged to incorporate the style of witch- doctors into their services. Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Lusaka was recalled to Rome because his public faith-healing meetings and exorcisms — in the view of the Vatican — got out of hand. He was accused of being a witch-doctor. I have seen witch-doctors take services in remote villages when no priest was available. Long residence in Europe does not destroy an African's instinctual belief in witchcraft. Near where I live in south London is an exile who, I heard at a party for African students, has magic that en- ables him to speak directly to his relatives at home. Perhaps British Telecom should contact him.