By Boniface Ndemping Wewe (Ngonyama Ka Brooklyn)
What a difference modern technology and the media make! Michela Wrong, author of “on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo” opines that African life is marked by social realities. One of them is tribalism by which politicians reward their tribesmen for loyalty and another is black magic/witchcraft. I would add in mitigation of Ms. Wrong’s judgment that traditional medicine as practiced by genuine African healers that some mislabel ‘witchdoctor’ relies on plants and the spirit of the ancestors, and the psychology/mental health of their patients. The fake ones have given all traditional healers a bad name all over Africa (see excerpts from newspaper articles further on).
