Witchcraft Discrimination and Violence

Witches and witchcraft have been with us for centuries, but this is not something that is widely understood nor accepted. Perhaps for these reasons, witchery has become an unwitting instrument for women abuse.

Many people are not only ignorant about, but they are also fearful of, witchcraft. This makes them, perhaps (?), more likely to blame their misfortunes upon it, and also more susceptible to partaking in mob "justice" against someone alleged to be a malevolent witch.

Easy in the Dark Ages for someone envious of another's better fortune, or someone looking to settle a private score with another, to denounce her as a witch. Trials for witching had very little other than personal testimony to serve as evidence and the courts were not above using a variety of torturous means to extract a confession from a woman accused of being a witch.

Historians differ greatly in their estimates of how many women suffered or died in European witch-hunts during the last couple of millennia. All agree however, that these persecutions have not been discontinued, albeit that we are now well into the 21st century.

Even in the United States, witches are subjected to discrimination and prejudice. In South Africa and other parts of Africa, there are still cases of witches being burned by lynch mobs or expelled from their communities. Many of these women do not even believe in witches, let alone practice witchcraft, yet it takes little more than the accusation of a fellow villager for them to be persecuted. And then the whole community will help shield the mobsters from justice.

In one part of South Africa, entire villages have been established to accommodate refugee accused witches who, with their families, have fled their homes in fear of their lives. Witchcraft violence reached such proportions in the last decade of the twentieth century in South Africa, that its Commission on Gender Equity implemented a special programme to address, and put an end to, this form of abuse.

The programme comprised an education and information campaign, combined with dedicated efforts on the part of the police to stamp out mob "justice". The country's Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1957 was also subjected to legislative reform, and by July 2000, the CGE noted a marked decrease in this kind of crime.

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