The African Conception of Sacrifice and its Relationship with Child Sacrifice

Abstract

Although the practice of human sacrifice is not new in the mythology around sacrifice in Africa, the practice of child mutilation and sacrifice at least in Uganda was just spoken about as fairytale. However events that have unraveled since the late 1990s have shocked the country with real cases of children being mutilated and killed in the context of what is commonly referred to as child sacrifice in Uganda. This paper presents the “African” meaning of the concept sacrifice and how demonstrates how the in African religious theology disassociates itself from murder and mutilation of children‟s body parts as part of the rituals for healing, dealing misfortunes or even prevention of unfortunate events. There was consensus from our study participants that although historically, there has been human and child sacrifice in the African and Uganda cultural mythology, the actual practice of these vices is a new phenomenon, not recognized and accepted in indigenous/traditional religious theology and practice of African religion and culture.