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Kick Dust at their Heels and See if they Cough: Witches in Ghana 

Review by D. S. Farrer 

 

Witchcraft, Witches, and Violence in Ghana  

by Mensah Adinkrah 

Berghahn, 2015 

 

Mensah Adinkrah starts with a complaint that scholarly attention to witchcraft in Ghana has focused 

almost exclusively on witchcraft-related violence and witch’s camps in northern Ghana. He claims: 

“This ignores the major problem, and the very different forms of witchcraft violence that occur in the 

southern part of Ghana,” adding that, “[m]ost of this book focuses on the witchcraft ideology of the 

Akan, but considers witchcraft beliefs and related violence throughout Ghana” (x).  The author follows 

his assertion with ten chapters, few of which return specifically to the problem of how northern and 

southern witchcraft violence differ. Instead, witchcraft here is treated as a monolithic bloc, with the 

emphasis on Akan “traditional beliefs,” and the occasional nod towards the Islamic north and other 

tribal divisions. Aside from the initial authorial promise not followed through, the rationale for research 

oft-provided in this text—that major problems have been ignored, omitted, or never previously 

studied—begs the question of when, why, how, and for whom research is conducted. The author asserts 

the noble cause of “helping to eradicate witchcraft violence in Ghana and elsewhere” (xi), but to my 

mind this may be read as a conflation of ideas, where calls to eradicate witchcraft violence are actually 

calls to eradicate witchcraft per se. For the most part the book is written in an omniscient journalistic 

style, appearing lucid, and matter of fact, albeit in a nudge, nudge, wink, wink narrative collusion with 

the reader. The book's raw focus to articulate a social problem comes at the expense of a more thorough 

treatment of the extant theoretical literature (E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Jeanne Favret-Saada, and Paul 

Stoller to name a few). Despite announcing surveys of the anthropological literature in the 

“Introduction: Witchcraft Violence in Comparative Perspective” the author seems unaware of the 

meaning of Evans-Pritchard's famous distinction between sorcerer and witch, to blithely collapse 



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African experience (yes, all of it) into the medieval European witch craze. Numb to anthropological 

theory, the book also fails to outline the methods employed in a fashion that would satisfy the 

criminologist or sociologist. The research claims authority on the basis of anthropology, ethnography, 

sociology, and criminology, yet the rigorous demands of these discourses to engage current theoretical 

arguments or to provide methodological details are unmet, leaving the reader tantalizing glimpses as to 

exactly how, where, and when, the research was conducted. Merely citing another academic review is a 

cop-out and not the same as conducting a review of the massive literature and making an original 

contribution to the field. Nevertheless, in the study of witchcraft an indigenous perspective is 

welcomed, including, “The author’s own seven years of experience in an all-boys boarding secondary 

school in Ghana” (110). 

 

Chapter 1, “Ghana: The Research Setting” provides a summary overview of history, politics, 

population, literacy, education, economy, communications, health, common diseases and substance 

abuse, mental illness, and the comparatively low status of women, children, the elderly, and the 

disabled in Ghana. Sections on the north-south developmental divide and contemporary Ghanaian ethos 

reveal a modern obsession with material advantage as a reflection of spiritual potency, or lack thereof. 

Sub-sections on “traditional religion” and “religion” blur the two subjects to provide a sense of 

overwhelming Christian spiritual dominance as a means to convey benefit or avoid misfortune via the 

intercession of spirit ancestors. By this point I sensed that a focus on the contradictory and violent role 

of Christian clergy and pastors in witchcraft violence is a missed opportunity, and could, perhaps 

should have been the central theme of this book. After listing atrocities the narrative switches to 

banality. The author states: “Contemporary anthropological literature and numerous media reports 

indicate that belief in witchcraft phenomena exists in many societies, although these beliefs remain 

more entrenched in some places than in others” (14). What are “many”? What has belief got to do with 

practice? The classic theme in the anthropological witchcraft literature for generations, the issue of 

misplaced cognition, faulty logic, is evident here on every other page, but the author makes no attempt 

to address this fundamental debate. The book is not a contribution to anthropological inquiry, but 

mostly a tour of depredation. Outdated statistics compete with bizarre sentence formation. Citing a 

source in a section on mental illness and pointing out the lack of facilities and provision for treatment, 

the author says, for example, “Concurrently, several people with psychiatric and neurological disorders 

such as schizophrenia, manic depression, neurosis, epilepsy, and other severe and common mental 

disorders do not receive any medical care” (29). 

 



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From an anthropological perspective, chapter 2, is the best chapter in the book. “Witchcraft Beliefs in 

Ghana,” provides an outline of the scope of witchcraft, socially, in terms of “believers” from all walks 

of life; indicates the victims of witchcraft violence, primarily the elderly, the disabled, women and 

children, and the mentally ill; and introduces the perpetrators of violence, anti-witchcraft fetish priests, 

witch doctors, spiritual healers, clergy, and Christian pastors, illustrating, albeit unacknowledged, one 

of Evans-Pritchard’s key distinctions between sorcery and witchcraft (the latter passed down, inherited, 

perhaps from an elder family member spitting it into the mouth of the new witch, or passed through 

contaminated food), as opposed to  sorcery, which is learned (and for Evans-Pritchard, the domain of 

the nobility). As is to be expected the categories smear into one another: witch doctors are witches, and 

witches are located in guilds like sorcerers. Some details on chicken divination are provided. I can't 

help but regret that Evans-Pritchard’s foundational discourse on African religion, the unabridged 

version of Witchcraft, Oracles And Magic Among The Azande, was not consulted. Nevertheless, this 

chapter provides a keen insider view, and a useful starting point for contemporary research. 

 

Chapter 3, introduces the core theme of the book, “Socialization into Witchcraft Beliefs.” Radio shows, 

television, newspapers, magazines, children's books, and the Internet are discussed as instruments of 

socialization. No attempt is made to draw out the key themes in folk tales, thrown in as an aside to the 

construction of social identity. Continuing the socialization theme chapter 4, “Witchcraft Themes in 

Popular Ghanaian Music,” ventures into ethnomusicology/content analysis, to examine eight songs 

concerning witchcraft beliefs. Interesting snippets stand out from repetitive analysis. The author 

reiterates: “The perceived relatively greater social stability and prosperity of the Western world is 

linked to the beneficent activities of European or American witches, whereas persistent warfare, 

famine, and poverty in Africa are attributed to the maleficent, harmful, or diabolical witchcraft of 

African peoples” (137). What needs to be explained given “this era of heightened retraditionalization of 

the society” (157) is why is everyone so paranoid about bewitchment, specifically from members of 

their own family? What drives a culture of familial distrust, envy, and resentment?  The author begs the 

question ad nauseum, trotting out further redundant "data” for the socialized "belief" in witchcraft, 

albeit leading up to a more interesting criminological analysis of power, gender, and social control in 

chapter 9, “Gendered Victimization: Patriarchy, Misogyny, and Gynophobia,” where it is opined that 

although wizards (males) are considered far more powerful in terms of black and white magic than are 

witches (females), women are greatly overrepresented among those undergoing exorcism rituals in 

Christian prayer camps and Christian spiritual churches (270), for reasons of patriarchy, misogyny, and 

women’s changing roles under difficult conditions, persecution the author says may be explained via 



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the “backlash hypothesis” (271). 

 

That music is an agent of socialization, as are proverbs, is considered in chapter 5, “Witchcraft Imagery 

in Akan Proverbs.” Thirty-four proverbs are provided, adding depth, although the analysis suffers from 

some repetition. Chapter 6, “Witchcraft Trials in Ghanaian Courts,” describes four trials, two for 

defamation of character resulting from witchcraft accusations, successfully defended; and two 

vigilantism cases ending in the murder of accused witches, where some perpetrators received the death 

penalty, and others life imprisonment. Recorded witch's confessions claimed members of the coven 

transformed into a lizard, cat, goat, vulture, owl, elephant, parrot, and centipede. "Nonbelievers in 

witchcraft saw the case as yet another example of inanity" (202).  This raises an implicit question of the 

relation of religion, African or otherwise, to principles of consistency, logic, and insanity. Chapter 7, 

“Witch Killings” briefly outlines forty gruesome homicides made public in media reports from 1980-

2012, showing that older, lower income women are the most liable to be murdered for witchcraft. 

Chapter 8, “Nonlethal Treatment of Alleged Witches” details thirty-eight disturbing cases where 

victims suffered life-threatening injuries, physical and verbal abuse, and psychological torment, where 

refusal to submit to an ordeal is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Ghanaian refuges, we are told, 

collectively accommodate as many as eight thousand suspected witches, where suspected witches must 

submit to a dewitching or exorcism regimen (242), spending years if not the rest of their lives in such 

camps. Finally, the conclusion, “Curbing Witchcraft-Related Violence in Ghana,” suggests further 

interventions are necessary in the health professions, criminal justice system, and the educational 

system alongside improvements in mental health palliative care and changes in media and 

representation of a numerically increasing generation of post-menopausal women facing poverty and 

hardship in their final years. My favourite takeaway from the book is the notion that although witches 

appear upright they actually walk upside down, therefore, to detect a witch simply kick sand at their 

heels and see if they rub their eyes (93). I shall be kicking dust around the heels of my Ghanaian 

relatives this Christmas, where the book will surely be of interest and make a worthy addition to the 

shelf. 

 

Douglas Farrer @schizmogenesis is Visiting Professor in Performance at the University of Plymouth, 

and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Guam. Dr. Farrer has conducted extensive 

field research in Singapore, Malaysia, and Guam. His publications include War Magic: Religion, 

Sorcery, and Performance (2016); Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a 

Transnational World (2011); and Shadows of the Prophet: Martial Arts and Sufi Mysticism (2009). 



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© 2017 Douglas Farrer 


