Limitless Opportunities for Wealth? Witchcraft as a Strategy for (In)Equality and Economic (Dis) Empowerment

Abstract

The persistence of witchcraft beliefs and practices in Africa contradicts earlier scholarly work that suggested it would disappear. In addition, theorising witchcraft as a local discourse that only exists between people in an intimate relationship in anthropology has also long been challenged. This strand of scholarship has sought to understand witchcraft within the local-global nexus pointing to a new direction in witchcraft studies. Unlike other themes in anthropology that began the discipline, witchcraft continues to be a ‘hot currency’ topic and has been termed by some scholars as the ‘long conversation’. This article presents a current ethnographic account of how witchcraft is utilised by individuals as a strategy for wealth gain and protection and serves as narrative for the challenges individuals are experiencing when having to navigate between often incompatible expectations placed on the individual vis-a-vis the community. This is further exemplified through the ethnographic account on how witchcraft strategies are employed against individuals who are pursuing success in neoliberal socio-economic model.