With witchcraft all is darkness

WITCHCRAFT has existed for centuries, side by side with religion, medicine, psychiatry and psychology. Mostly, it has been associated with the Dark Side of humankind.

There are not many documents glorifying witchcraft as a way of life, in spite of the Harry Potter books and films, or the books of such authors as Dennis Wheatley and Edgar Alan Poe.

In Europe and the United States, there were periods when people alleged to be practicing witchcraft were hanged or burnt at the stake. They were seen as representing The Devil himself, merchants of death and destruction.

In Africa, the so-called Dark Continent, there has been witchcraft in almost every society. Growing up even in the urban areas of colonial Southern Africa, you were warned against witchcraft, not only by the white Christian settlers, but also even by your own elders. It dealt mostly with revenge and death, you were told, and was to be avoided like…. the plague.

But when cabinet ministers in Zimbabwe were involved with a spirit medium who claimed there was diesel gushing out of Chinhoyi rural rocks, people began to wonder what evil spirit had possessed the leadership – and for how long?

Had the country been run, for this undefined period, on the basis of the advice of some uneducated spirit medium? Others were reminded of Shakespeare’s Macbeth where three witches played a role in the struggle by Macbeth to take over the leadership of Scotland.

Had someone in the Zanu PF hierarchy invested so much faith in what was, basically, witchcraft, to take over the country’s political leadership? Was their trump card this scam of diesel pouring out of a Chinhoyi rock?

Or, even more dangerously, had the leadership, including the president, been conned into believing the country’s fuel problems could be solved by this woman, Rosina Mavhunga of Chinhoyi?

People began to speculate on what crucial role she had played in the government decision to launch the disastrous price blitz. Others even went as far back as the land reform fiasco: was that her handiwork too, for its implementation was bathed in so much bloodshed it would be consistent with the reputation of her calling?

It was argued, reasonably, that the spirit medium was not a witch or a wizard. But it was also argued, logically: did this suggest she was in communication with the Supernatural?

Were civilized, educated, Christian leaders expected to believe a diesel bonanza existed on the basis of what this woman, not known to possess any scientific background, told them?

The government of President Mugabe is desperate for a solution to its hugely challenging political and economic problems. It would not be unusual for it to grab at straws, risking the outrage of the people.

By admitting publicly that he had sanctioned the setting up of a “taskforce” to try and authenticate the spirit medium’s claim, Mugabe shocked many citizens. The government mouthpiece, The Herald, told the story thus: “He (Mugabe) said the Government was forced to send a taskforce comprising Cabinet ministers and senior Government officials to verify claims that diesel was oozing out of rocks at Maningwa Hills in Chinhoyi.”

Why? The conclusion is that there was a faint hope among the top people that this woman might have hit on a surefire solution to the problem of fuel shortages
This is a display, not only of how naïve they are, but also of how they are completely clueless as to how to solve many of our problems.

There was once the Suppression of Witchcraft Act on our Statute books, introduced by the settlers shortly after 1890. Speculation was that they were frightened witchcraft could be used to disrupt their conquest of the Africans. In their eyes, the exploits of the spirit mediums during the First Chimurenga must have amounted to the worst varieties of witchcraft.

Professor Gordon Chavanduka, the noted sociologist and a prime promoter of the formation of a traditional healers’ organisation, was always against the settler legislation on witchcraft.

The indigenous people have always believed in witchcraft and traditional medicine, although quite often there was always a fuzzy distinction between the two.
An amendment to the law allowed for the acceptance of traditional medicine, which is now being actively promoted by the government, in tandem with the use of modern medicine.

Still, what the Mugabe government has done to its own credibility is probably incalculable, for the moment. The portrait of a self-confident, hard-nosed leadership confronting its worst crisis with courage has been shattered.

Instead, we have this picture of a group of desperate men and women, their party divided over the suitability of an 83-year-old man as their presidential candidate, wondering if their salvation could be provided by a woman who says diesel is gushing out of a rock.

Among the people sent to “verify” the woman’s amazing claims were Didymus Mutasa and Godwin Mastanga: the former is a former Speaker of Parliament, an ally of the only white person interred at Heroes Acre, Guy Clutton-Brock of Cold Comfort farm fame and formerly of St Faith’s mission in Rusape, an Anglican establishment.

Matanga is a deputy commissioner of police, who you would expect to deal only with the facts, and not with innuendos and conjecture.
Then there is Mugabe himself. It may be accurate that, during the struggle, there was much use made of the spirit mediums. But so far, nobody has been able to say, for instance, that the blowing up of the fuel tanks in Harare, resulted form the advice of a spirit medium. 

And was it a spirit medium who advised that The Battle of Chinhoyi would shake to its roots the rebel regime’s self- confidence in itself?

But would Mugabe routinely sanction a “mission” such as the one he sent to Chinhoyi knowing fully well that if there were diesel deposits in the area, they would probably have been discovered  a long time ago…by capitalist, profit-obsessed entrepreneurs?

In theory, this circus over the diesel from the rocks should ram the final nail in Zanu PF’s chances of winning the 2008 election.

What reasonable voter is going to place their faith in a group of people who can be easily hoodwinked by an uneducated spirit medium to the extent of dispatching a high-powered team into the hinterland to probe the possibility of diesel gushing out of a rock?

The lavish inauguration of the bio-diesel plant at Mount Hampden, during which Mugabe threatened to deal decisively with the hapless spirit medium, impressed very few people.

If this conversion of a crop into diesel is so effective, why has the rest of the world not cottoned onto it? Zimbabwe has the first plant of its kind, we were told. The likelihood of the country remaining the only possessor of such a plant is very real: its  potential to solve our diesel shortage problem has, so far, not been independently determined or confirmed.

Coming shortly after the debacle in the Chinhoyi hills, the inauguration of the plant cannot inspire ordinary people in the government’s ability to solve their basic problems with any urgency or efficiency.

The banks still do not have enough money, the fuel is still in short supply, the supermarket shelves are still empty, the price of basic commodities is still beyond the reach of many citizens, transport is still a nightmare and the health delivery system is a sick joke.

But the most glaring example of the government’s contempt of the ordinary people is the violence against them.

Almost every day, either the soldiers or the police inflict violence on people over trivial matters. For that, the people might finally turn against Mugabe and Zanu PF. They must now recognize that a group of people who can be fooled by a spirit medium has absolutely no business trying to run a country, even if their only weapon is violence.

For faith in spirit mediums or witchcraft can only lead to darkness.