Ethnographic Sorcery (3 page)

This is not to say that Muedans did not speak about sorcery. After the evening meal had been consumed, those with whom I lived and worked frequently huddled around the fire and, in hushed tones, told stories, or shared rumors, about sorcery’s occurrence among them. Muedans, however, knew to contain sorcery discourse within prescribed bounds. It was not only sorcerers but also officials of the Mozambican Liberation Front (A Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, or FRELIMO) that they feared would overhear them.
⁴

In this tense environment, I was party to frequent conversations about sorcery, so long as I listened quietly and asked only scattered questions. As soon as I expressed interest—as soon as I moved beyond simple expressions of revulsion or dread in response to what I heard and began to “interview” the tellers of these stories—conversations abruptly ended.
⁵

Even so, as I spent time with Kalamatatu and a few others who spoke openly with me about the topic of sorcery, I became more attuned to the subtle, but frequent, references most Muedans made to sorcery during those evening sessions around
the fire, and at other moments when they shared with one another what they knew of the illnesses and misfortunes of their neighbors and kin. These conversations often incorporated what, at first, seemed to me unrelated topics: the sound of an owl, at night, outside someone’s house; the sudden appearance, in the middle of a pathway, of animal footprints; the perceived asymmetry of a sick person’s face; the momentary resemblance of a corpse to a banana tree. In time, I myself learned to recognize the signs and symptoms of sorcery, at least in the images Muedans produced. Indeed, I slowly came to appreciate that sorcery constituted a language through which the Muedans with whom I worked comprehended and—even if euphemistically
⁶
—commented upon the workings of power in their midst. I slowly came to realize that if I was to discern how Muedans understood the social, political, and economic transformations they experienced—if I was to uncover their visions of changing times—I would have to learn the language of sorcery. As this would not be possible in the 1994 environment of postwar transition and electoral politicking, however, I set aside this component of my research agenda until a later date.

“
T
HIS
M
UST
B
E
S
TUDIED
S
CIENTIFICALLY”

After defending my doctoral dissertation in 1997 and taking up a visiting lectureship at the London School of Economics, I had the opportunity in 1999 to return to the Mueda plateau to undertake further intensive fieldwork. I determined this time to make sorcery the explicit focus of my research. I had been assisted in my fieldwork in 1994 by Marcos Agostinho Mandumbwe—a Muedan by origin, a FRELIMO veteran of the Mozambican independence war, an experienced field researcher who had worked at ARPAC for several years, and, at the time I met him, official historian at the Pemba office of the Association of Veterans of the War of National Liberation (Associação dos Combatentes de Luta de Libertação Nacional, or ACLLN). Our successful collaboration in 1994 had been founded upon shared interest in the history of the Mueda plateau region and, specifically, the history of the Mozambican independence war. While Marcos’s status as a FRELIMO party cadre generally facilitated our work, I was unable to research politically sensitive topics—such as sorcery—in the company of such an active member of the ruling party. What research I did in 1994 on sorcery, I did with the assistance of ARPAC investigator Eusébio
Tissa Kairo, a younger man who had not been “trained by FRELIMO” and who, consequently, more easily followed his curiosity into the emergent spaces of Mozambican postsocialism. Because I had worked so well with Marcos on other issues, however, I hoped that he might be able to join me when I made sorcery the focus of my research in 1999. Much had changed, I knew, since we last worked together in Mueda. Mozambicans had had nearly five years’ experience with democratic governance. While the governing FRELIMO party and the opposition, led by the Mozambican National Resistance (A Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, or RENAMO), squabbled endlessly in Parliament, their disagreements had not destroyed the new multiparty regime. Over the radio, Mozambicans daily heard voices criticizing FRELIMO policies, past and present. Those who spoke out, Mozambicans observed, were tolerated by the government. Many, indeed, thrived. What is more—I learned in my first few days in Pemba—topics like sorcery were openly discussed and debated, not only among ordinary people but also on state radio.

When I presented my sorcery-focused research agenda to Marcos, it met with his unqualified enthusiasm.

“This must be studied,” he declared. “There is so much here to know,
mano
[brother].”

As he pondered the idea, his excitement grew deeper. “No one has ever studied these things in Mueda—not
scientifically,”
he said. “But these things must be studied . . .
scientifically.”

Relieved by his enthusiasm, I did not ask what Marcos meant by studying sorcery “scientifically,” but his words echoed both the Portuguese colonial emphasis on science as an “apolitical” endeavor (West 2004) and the FRELIMO celebration of “scientific socialism.” As I later pondered what it might mean to study sorcery “scientifically,” several questions presented themselves: In what kinds of situations did sorcery arise? What kinds of social relations engendered it? Who attacked whom, meaning, into what social categories did the perpetrators and victims generally fall? What motives and justifications were proffered
for and attributed to sorcery attacks? To answer these questions, we would be required to catalogue Muedans’ knowledge of sorcery; to systematically document as many events and perspectives as possible; to trace accusations and rumors of the practice of sorcery to their sources; and, ultimately, to ask questions that Muedans did not ask about sorcery.

A brief and unsubstantiated statement made by Yussuf Adam—a Mozambican researcher at the African Studies Center (Centro de Estudos Africanos, or CEA) at Eduardo Mondlane University (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, or UEM)—served as a point of departure for the “scientific” study of sorcery as I imagined such an undertaking. In an article published in 1993 in the journal of the Mozambican Historical Archive (Arquivo Historico de Moçambique, or AHM), Adam asserted that those accused of producing lions in Mueda were “none other than landowners” (1993: 51–53). Adam’s assertion echoed those of researchers working in Africa in the late colonial period who suggested that sorcery accusations ran along specific sociological lines of tension (Epstein 1967; Krige and Krige 1943; Marwick 1967; Wilson [1951] 1970).
¹
Beidelman (1963: 74), for example, argued that, among Kaguru in Tanzania, the categories of people most often accused of sorcery included the economically successful and the politically powerful.
²
By contrast, Forde (1958: 170) suggested that among Yako, it was most often young women who were accused by members of the patrilineage into which they married. Begging the question of directionality, Terray (1975) suggested that accusations among Abron occurred most frequently between men and members of their fathers’ matrilineages seeking to appropriate their wealth.
³

Muedans, however, frustrated my every attempt to discern the sociological patterns of sorcery. The “data” that we gathered not only contradicted Adam’s thesis but proved resistant to the formation of any coherent counterthesis. The more data we gathered, in fact, the more complicated became the sociology of Muedan sorcery.
⁴

Muedans sometimes explicitly asserted that elders were indeed more generally suspected of the practice of sorcery than youths. In principle, because
mitela
(medicinal substances, used in the practice of sorcery and countersorcery) and their uses had to be learned, the longer one had to study, the more one might know. It followed, then, that sorcerers—particularly the most powerful among them—would be the aged. Indeed, Muedan villagers often accused the elderly among them of sorcery. When an elder’s name was mentioned, Muedans would often exclaim, “Sheeeee! That old man knows something!”—a common euphemism for sorcery. The more physical infirmities an elder had, the more the passage of time had marked his body, the more suspect he became. A limp was considered a telltale sign that one had been injured in someone’s yard at night by a
lipande
(antisorcery mine), set there by a countersorcerer to defend the occupant against sorcery attack.

It came as a surprise to me, then, when I discovered upon reading my field notes in the midst of my research that I had recorded more incidences of young people being accused of sorcery than of elders. Lucas Mwikumbi, in the village of Matambalale, told us that he suspected that most sorcery, these days, could in fact be attributed to village youths. “They have an advantage over elders,” he explained to us. “They go from place to place very easily. Wherever they go, they can buy
mitela
and learn how to use them.” Francisco Ntumbati, in the village of Matambalale, agreed with Mwikumbi. Today’s young people, he told me, “run wild” in the villages, smoking
suruma
(cannabis) and finding outlets for their disrespect, including sorcery. In Nandimba, the healer Maurício Mpwapwele Moto told us, “Those who injure themselves [another euphemism for sorcerers] these days are children. They have no respect for their elders. Sometimes, these children will say to their elders, ‘You cannot mess with me! If you do, I’ll fix you!’ Where there is such lack of respect, you can be sure that there is sorcery.” In discussing sorcery and youth with us, the healer Vantila Shingini of Namande concluded, “Children these days play mean.”

Just as Muedans generally stated, in principle, that elders had a comparative advantage over youth in learning the techniques of sorcery, so they concluded that men—who enjoyed greater mobility—had greater access to the requisite knowledge to perform sorcery than did women. Again, however, I discovered in my field notes that those with whom we had conversed more often attributed sorcery to women than to men when speaking concretely. Some flatly challenged the association of sorcery with men. Tiago Mateu of Matambalale told us, without hesitation, “Among sorcerers, there are more women than men!” Pikashi Lindalandolo told us that most of the sorcerers who came to him in need of treatment for injuries (a euphemism for having wounded oneself by tripping antisorcery defenses in the course of attacking someone) were in fact young girls.

My data also indicated that sorcery suspects were well distributed over other categorical divides in Muedan society. From the colonial era to the present, the poor accused their wealthier neighbors and kin of feeding insatiable appetites by preying upon their well-being. Whether as colonial-era labor migrants or as postcolonial entrepreneurs who combined the power of state office with command of the marketplace, the wealthy traveled widely, attracting suspicion that they had come to learn, and were able to deploy, novel sorcery techniques. “The ‘big chiefs’ eat everything!” Muedans often lamented. By the same token, these “big chiefs” suspected their poorer neighbors and kin of envy and accused them of seeking to devour their wealth through acts of sorcery. Whether labor migrants or politicians or businessmen who enjoyed success in postcolonial urban contexts, the relatively well-off articulated their suspicions most clearly by staying away from their villages of origin whenever possible.

Christians and non-Christians alike were also subject to sorcery accusations. The
humu
Mandia told us that Christians were the targets of sorcery because their wealth and knowledge of the Bible and of foreign languages attracted envy. So strong was the association of sorcery with non-Christians that Catholic mis
sionaries at Nang’ololo had trouble keeping trainees, many of whom left the church’s employ, missionaries told us, for fear that they would be “killed at night.” Christians, on the other hand, were accused of practicing sorcery as well to protect themselves and their acquired wealth.

In light of all of this, I might simply have read my field notes as confirmation that sorcery provided an idiom for the expression of social tensions between Muedans of various categories and their respective sociological “others,” were it not for the fact that my notes also bore evidence that Muedans suspected and accused those with whom they shared essential social attributes. In other words, men did not exempt other men from suspicion of sorcery, nor did women exempt other women. Youths accused youths, and elders accused elders. Accusations emerged not only across the divides between rich and poor, and between Christian and non-Christian, but also within these categories.

As my frustration peaked, the healer Atanásio Herneo of Matambalale explicitly stated what my data implicitly told me. When I asked him who sorcerers were—whether they were generally men or women, youths or elders, Christian or non-Christian, rich or poor—he answered bluntly, “Most people are
vavi
[sorcerers]—almost everyone. In fact, the person who is not a
mwavi
[sorcerer] is a rare person indeed.”
⁵
The healer Boaventura Makuka told us much the same thing. When we asked him if there was any way to eliminate sorcery, he replied, “There are far more people in this world who are
vavi
than there are who are not. As long as there are people in the world, there will be
uwavi
[sorcery]!”

Sensing our “scientific” research agenda in peril, I turned to Marcos one evening. “We have been told that anyone can be a
mwavi,”
I said. “But in the end, who are these
vavi,
generally, and who do they generally attack?” I heard my voice now pleading. “Is there some sort of pattern? Is there a
sense
to it all?!”