Religion and Politics
Politics, however it is defined precisely, is a way of conceiving and organizing relations of power. In modern times it has become closely identified with the sovereign states that, since 1945, have been the building blocks of the international system of diplomacy and law. Yet in most of Africa sovereign states of the modern type have only a short history, so much so that, according to the historian John Lonsdale (1981: 139), ‘the most distinctively African contribution to human history could be said to have been precisely the civilized art of living fairly peaceably together not in states’.
It is when one considers how people in so many parts of Africa were able to live together for countless centuries in coherent societies, but without states in the conventional sense, that the deep-seated importance of religion in sub-Saharan Africa becomes apparent. In Africa, religion has historically been considered a form of power, and it is this above all that makes it the Siamese twin of politics in modern times. As Michael Schatzberg notes, most Africans:
… understand that ‘politics’ and ‘religion’ are parts of the same terrain: that power flows between the visible material world and the invisible spiritual world; and that the political kingdom contains a politically significant spiritual terrain. Moreover, intelligent and gifted politicians know the contours of this terrain and are comfortable traversing it in either its material or spiritual manifestations. They understand that in their culture power is unitary and cannot be divided into separate boxes.
(Schatzberg 2001: 74)
In considering this observation, it immediately becomes clear how important it is to define what precisely is meant by religion. This is not best done by choosing a favourite definition of religion from among the many dozens on offer. Many of the definitions of religion popular among social scientists are derived from classical sociologists such as Durkheim and Weber, yet these are generally not the most conducive to understanding the relation of religion and politics in Africa. It is therefore most useful to formulate a definition that emerges from the context under study. It is to this end that we have elsewhere proposed a working definition of religion in Africa as ‘a belief in the existence of an invisible world, distinct but not separate from the visible one, that is home to spiritual beings with effective powers over the material world’ (Ellis and ter Haar 2004: 14). This is a working definition, elaborated with a view to incorporating the entire range of religious practices and ideas in Africa. It follows in the tradition of the nineteenth-century anthropologist E.B. Tylor (1958: 8) in its insistence on the spiritual element of religion.
Three aspects of our working definition make it particularly well suited for present purposes. First, it is not only Africans who are religious inasmuch as they believe it is possible to communicate with a perceived world of spirits, but people in many other parts of the world too. Considering religion in this way therefore emphasizes some of what Africa has in common with other places rather than drawing attention to its uniqueness – the latter being a feature of so much writing on Africa. Second, our definition incorporates practices often referred to as ‘magic’ or ‘superstition’ or in similarly value-laden terms, the use of which excludes certain forms of religious expression from qualifying as religion at all. A third, related advantage of defining religion in the way we do is that it avoids attributing a moral value to any particular type of belief. Our definition does not imply that religion is always in pursuit of that which is noble or good. Religion, in the sense we define it, may include both socially constructive and destructive practices. It is hard to understand its relation to politics in Africa without appreciating this point.
Throughout Africa’s known history, people have generally perceived all power to have its ultimate origin in the spirit world. This is often not immediately apparent, however, as many Africans may normally devote rather little time to religious matters. A person may spend virtually all of his or her time dealing with mundane matters yet still believe that these are ultimately determined in the invisible world. Rather as the driver of a car knows that his vehicle depends utterly on petrol but does not generally spend more than a few minutes taking on fuel, so people might give regular attention to the spirit world in order to maintain their wellbeing, but only for short periods. This emphasis on the invisible world as a source of power, and religious practice as a means of accessing it, stands in marked contrast to a common tendency in Europe and North America to define religion primarily in terms of a search for meaning in life.
Notwithstanding the closeness of their relationship, religion and politics in Africa are not identical. Some of Africa’s billion people are determined secularists in the sense of holding that society should be governed by institutions that have no connection with any perceived spirit world. In fact, there are indications that people in Africa are more indifferent to religion today than in the past (Messi Metogo 1997; Shorter and Onyancha 1997). However, as one expert tells us, ‘even those who claim to be atheist, agnostic, or anti-religion, of whom there is a growing number, often have no option but to participate in extended family activities, some of which require the invocation of supernatural powers’ (Moyo 2001: 299).
The Imposition of Intellectual Categories
The idea that politics and religion form two distinct fields is not common to all societies, nor has every language had exact equivalents for these two terms in their vocabularies. Ideas about the nature of religion and politics (especially their identification as distinct and separate fields) have evolved in particular ways in Europe and in societies heavily influenced by European emigration to such an extent that they have become a key shared element of the otherwise disparate collection of countries known as ‘the West’. Over time, European authors, ethnographers, missionaries, and officials have introduced to Africa ideas emanating from their own history that they have assumed to be universal or, at any rate, to be essential to any project of development or progress. One of the keys to understanding the history of power relations in Africa is to appreciate the way in which indigenous ideas and those introduced by colonial officials and missionaries have influenced one another to produce the situation as it obtains today (see Erdmann, this volume).
So deeply embedded in history are specific European ideas about religion and politics that they can be traced back to classical antiquity. It is illuminating briefly to consider the history of theorizing about religion in Christian Europe in order to elucidate some of the problems inherent in applying the term ‘religion’ to Africa.
For the ancient Romans, religio was an organized and controlled activity of the patrician class that could be distinguished from superstitio, the religious practice of the lower orders of Roman society, which was associated with perceived social and intellectual disorder (Momigliano 1977: 141–59). In regard to the twin concepts of religio and superstitio, Italo Ronca (1992: 43) has observed that ‘neither the terms themselves nor their negative correlation are cross-cultural universals to be reckoned with in all cultures or at all times: in many areas not influenced by Christianity there is no equivalent to such conceptual terminology’. The meaning of these terms is historically conditioned, as are their correlative semantic fields. Early Christian authors, of whom the most influential was Augustine of Hippo (CE 354–430), drew on this classical model of higher and lower forms of religion to define Christianity as true religion, considering other types of belief or practice as being of a lesser order. Furthermore, the circumstances of early Christian Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West were such as to emphasize the separation of the Catholic Church as the bastion of official religion from the institutions of the state (Brown 1996). Formed by this history and drawing on these traditions, European writers in mediaeval and early modern times considered there to be four types of religious observer in the world: Christians, Jews, Mohammedans (as Muslims were then known), and ‘the rest’, meaning all others deemed to be attached to some form of idolatry (Masuzawa 2007: 181) or, indeed, superstition – terms used in regard to beliefs of a supposedly lower order (Pagden 1986: 168–69).
As Europe’s influence in the world expanded, and its traders, soldiers and administrators came into sustained contact with distant parts of the globe, it became apparent to writers that a more complex classification was necessary, not least in order to accommodate the sophisticated beliefs enshrined in Buddhism, which possessed all the hallmarks of what a European intellectual of the time could regard as a ‘real’ religion as opposed to a mere superstition. However, the degree of respect shown to religions with sacred texts and extensive theological traditions hardly extended to indigenous African religious practices until quite recent times, and these remained consigned by writers to a residual category that included – to use the vocabulary of the nineteenth century – polytheists, animists, and idolaters.
In regard to the study of religion in Africa, it is, broadly speaking, possible to identify two phases (Platvoet 1996). The first of these can be described as ‘Africa as object’, referring to an early period in which religious data were studied by scholars from outside Africa, many of them amateur ethnographers. The cohort of early foreign collectors, antiquaries, and observers established many of the basic approaches, methods, concepts, and labels used by later scholars. A second phase is that of ‘Africa as subject’, when similar data were also being studied by professionally trained specialists, African scholars among them, eventually including those based in the universities that were established in Africa from the mid-twentieth century. Accompanying this change of phase from Africa-as-object to Africa-as-subject was a change in the moral value that observers ascribed to religion in Africa. In the high Victorian period, missionaries and colonizers generally considered indigenous African religious practices to be more or less uniformly contemptible because they did not constitute ‘true’ religion, with a partial exception being made only for Islam. John Peel (2000: 12) has noted in regard to Nigeria, for example, how early Christian evangelists often considered indigenous religious practices as ‘a kind of absence’. In other words, they were not perceived to have any real substance.
In general, it was only well into the colonial period that opinions like these tended to change. Some colonial officials, spending long periods in Africa, came to appreciate the complexity and subtlety of African religious ideas. If only for administrative purposes, they had to learn to understand the relationship of indigenous religion to justice, land tenure, and other matters affecting the social and political order which, as time went by, were increasingly likely to be glossed as ‘politics’. Moreover, the colonial period witnessed the arrival of professional anthropologists in Africa, who in the mid-twentieth century were inclined to view African religious ideas and practices in functional terms, as the cultural epiphenomena associated with specific social and political complexes bearing an ethnic label. Thus was the concept of ethnic religions formed, with a plethora of books on Zulu religion, Yoruba religion, and many others. It was characteristic of European administrators and scholars until quite late in the colonial period that Africa was best understood as being divided into thousands of discrete ethnic communities, each having its own culture and its own religion. Towards the end of the colonial period there also emerged the first texts from African intellectuals trained in European methods, who were able to describe in the academic vocabulary of their day religious and cultural systems that they knew from within.
The ways in which certain ideas and practices were construed by writers, clerics, politicians, and officials during colonial times as ‘religion’, ‘superstition’, or politics was of enduring importance. This was a process that had a great bearing on local perceptions of power and on the moral value attached to attempts to access it. While Europeans may have made sharp intellectual and practical distinctions between religion, public administration, and commerce, it was by no means clear that Africans did the same, being more likely to view these as different facets of the demonstration of prosperity and the exercise of power. During the heyday of European global expansion and empire, Christian religious ideas and practices in particular became associated with factors of material significance, including the import of manufactured goods, exposure to new patterns of consumption, new political arrangements and new practices of power more generally. It has been estimated that by the 1930s, colonies or ex-colonies covered no less than 84.6 per cent of the land surface of the globe (Loomba 1998: xiii).
The identification by European thinkers and administrators of certain practices as being religious or otherwise in nature had a deep and lasting impact on societies not only in Africa but in many other parts of the world as well. Some of the effects have been well described by the Korean scholar Chin Hong Chung (2007), who notes that before the late nineteenth century the Korean language had no equivalent to the word ‘religion’. It was an alien term that entered the country as part of a more general process of modernization, in this case transmitted via Japan. According to Chung:
… [t]he concept of religion never succeeded in incorporating our experience fully, and it has been utilised as an inappropriate measure and criterion in the description and understanding of our traditional belief culture. It is unavoidable, therefore, to reach the point where the empirical reality of traditional religious experience and its expression is distorted, devalued, and confused by such a newly enforced word as ‘religion’.
(Chung 2007: 206)
Similarly in Africa, where many or probably most languages appear to have had no ready translation for the word ‘religion’ prior to evangelization by Christian missionaries, existing practices of communication with an invisible world were changed by the manner in which they were variously described as either ‘religion’ or ‘superstition’. A new vocabulary and conceptual order gave a new meaning to ideas and practices in African societies concerning the manipulation of power generally, cutting across existing categories and thereby distorting the empirical reality of indigenous religious experience as well as its various expressions.
The introduction of a new vocabulary concerning the invisible world was part of a far more widespread imposition of new administrative arrangements and practices of power of Western origin or inspiration, most particularly during the colonial period, when European officials were at liberty to introduce administrative techniques that they not only found useful, but considered to be necessary for instituting the type of government structure that African societies would have to adopt if they were to make progress. Among the novelties introduced at this time was the identification of religion and politics as two distinct realms, which should properly be subject to institutional and intellectual separation. When early ethnographers wrote about power in African societies, they initially tended not to use the vocabulary of politics, so intimately bound up with European notions of statecraft, but rather to consider the matter in terms of culture and custom. In this regard, a landmark was reached with the publication in 1940 of African Political Systems (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940), a series of case studies of social organization and the principles of traditional government in a number of African societies, conceived explicitly as political institutions. Just as the experts of the colonial period were becoming able to appreciate the nuances of African ideas concerning the invisible world, and to describe these in terms of religion rather than mere superstition, so too were they becoming aware of the relationship between indigenous practices of power over the material world and wider patterns of governance, reflected in the vocabulary of politics.
The Nationalist Effect
Dispositions of power in general were rearranged with extraordinary speed by the movement towards decolonization. In the case of Nigeria, the most populous of all African countries, before the Second World War the academic Margery Perham (1962: xi) had, like just about every other observer, detected ‘an atmosphere of almost unlimited time in which to carry on the task, regarded then as hardly begun, of building a new Nigeria from the bottom up’. Three decades later, looking back on what had actually happened, it seemed incredible to her that Nigeria had in fact been constructed from above by the new party organizations that emerged with such amazing speed after 1945 (ibid.).
As one country after another south of the Sahara acquired sovereign status, enthusiasts both African and foreign believed that this represented a rupture in Africa’s history, to the extent that the continent was experiencing a new beginning (Davidson 1970: 266–68). Those like the historian Joseph Ade Ajayi, who perceived a great element of continuity in local ideologies and practices that transcended the colonial period, were rather spurned (Ade Ajayi 2000: 158). However, with the passage of time the degree to which African nationalists had assimilated many items of colonial ideology and colonial administrative practice has now become rather more apparent. Both colonialists and nationalists believed that Africa had previously lagged behind Europe in a variety of ways but that it could catch up by adopting the techniques of social engineering that were in vogue worldwide after 1945. Among all the colonial categories of thought to which new meaning was attributed by nationalist ideologues from the mid-twentieth century, politics took pride of place. Like the colonialists who had established colonial administrations using bureaucratic techniques similar to those in European metropoles, African nationalists conceived of the state as ‘the ultimate, most civilized form of organizing social and political life’, the necessary vector for all historical change (Soares de Oliveira 2007: 30). This way of thinking was incorporated into slogans of nation-building and development. It was generally assumed that African political life would henceforth revolve around the state and other formal institutions in much the same way as it had come to do since the seventeenth century in Europe. Among the raft of ideas taken over wholesale by nationalists was that states should be secular and bureaucratic in nature and that certain types of religion were more advanced than others. Even the handful of African countries that at a later stage were to declare themselves to be Islamic republics nevertheless retained many of the administrative techniques originally instituted by colonial rule (see Villalón, this volume).
Only with the passage of time did it become clear just how much continuity existed between colonial rule in its last phase and the early years of nationalist rule once African countries had acquired sovereign status. Post-colonial regimes that were presided over by Africans rather than Europeans continued to make abundant use of the practices, routines, and mentalities of their colonial predecessors. In fact, post-colonial states at first implemented colonial techniques and policies more intensively than ever, using them as a platform for a more ambitious form of political monopoly than anything to which their colonial predecessors could aspire (Young 2004). The former colonial metropoles were also pleased to make use of the continuities between colonial and nationalist rule for purposes of their own.
Like their counterparts in other fields, the African theologians and writers on religion who emerged in the mid-twentieth century also tended to assimilate colonial ideas, most often by turning colonial prejudices on their heads. African theologians articulated what may be called a ‘theology of continuity’ (Westerlund 1985: 89), by which African religious ideas and practices – far from being seen as inferior as they had been portrayed by earlier European writers – were interpreted in such a way as to identify elements of African indigenous religions that appear to resemble or anticipate aspects of Christian belief. Typical of this enterprise was the construction of African Traditional Religion – in the singular, and with capital letters – as a system of belief comparable to other major religions. One result of this change of perspective was to suggest that the African sub-continent is not divided into autonomous areas, each with its own distinctive religion corresponding to an ethnic identity, as earlier generations of Europeans had often supposed. Instead, commentators now tended to discern some of the similarities between religious ideas and practices over wide tracts of Africa, for example in regard to healing, noting that certain cults may mobilize people over very wide areas, creating a religious geography that transcends political boundaries (Ranger 1991).
New Realities
Looking back from the twenty-first century, it is increasingly clear that the actual workings of African states have come to differ in significant ways from the classical models of European origin, which remain the basic currency of formal statehood. Post-colonial governments in most of Africa were undermined in the first instance by the profound changes in the global context in the 1970s, especially in regard to finance. However, since the 1990s there have been various attempts to describe the ways in which power has come to be actually manipulated or located in African societies, giving rise to talk of ‘collapsed’, ‘failed’, or ‘fragile’ states. Several writers have resorted to images of shadows to evoke the ways in which Africa is now governed and how it is integrated into world affairs (e.g. Reno 1995: 2–3). The state, they imply, is like a solid object that casts a shadow. Analysts who deploy this image do so in an attempt to explain why concentrating on the official institutions and ideologies of the state deflects attention from some important relationships and institutions that, from an official point of view, have only an insubstantial existence. Actually, the metaphor of a shadow is rather misleading, as the shadow cast by official institutions often has more real substance than the formal structures of the state. One could better describe the state as a hologram, discernible amid the complex of relationships by which African societies are actually governed. Whatever solidity official institutions have often derives only from the fact that they enjoy legal recognition. In these circumstances, political power has become increasingly located in the gap between the official structures of the state and the law on the one hand, and everyday reality on the other. Successful politicians make use of the material provided by their societies.
In no field is this truer than in regard to religion. In many African countries, political leaders have taken to patronizing various types of religion and have become highly sensitive to the potential offered by spiritual power in general. Many countries have witnessed the rise of prophetic movements, which can emerge with astonishing speed from the most obscure corners of society. Sometimes, new prophets can attract massive followings with formidable political and even military consequences. In the most extreme cases, religious leaders have assumed political or even military roles, such as in the case of Alice Lakwena, the Ugandan prophetess who in the 1980s made common cause with a group of officers from a defeated army to create an important military movement (Behrend 1999).
The eruption of religious activity into the field of politics poses problems to students of both religion and politics. Labelling it a ‘revival’ or ‘resurgence’ in some ways conveys the misleading impression of a trend that previously existed but which had gone underground, whereas in fact many of today’s most visible religious movements have been publicly active for a long time, even if they have become subject to academic scrutiny only rather recently. In the case of Africa, both Christianity and Islam have been present in parts of the continent for a thousand years or more, and so their recent growth throughout the continent cannot be considered simply as a break with tradition. Similarly, the revival of African traditional religions is not a simple return to the past, but rather a reconfiguration for modern times. The current dynamism of religion as a political force in so many countries is a phenomenon with historical roots that extend into pre-colonial times. Nowadays, however, even movements that claim to be traditional in nature operate with an unprecedented awareness of global forces. Communities adopt religious beliefs and practices that emphasize their connection to, or difference from, other groups in ways that have to be considered in both global breadth and historical depth.
Taking account not only of the importance of religion but of a whole range of informal practices, it has become increasingly apparent that any comprehensive study of politics in Africa cannot be restricted to the formal workings of the state, particularly in situations where the state is notable more by its absence than its presence. Accordingly, many analysts have set off in search of politics ‘from below’ (Bayart 1981), to be found in the words and deeds of ordinary people and not only the formal activities of elected representatives or ministers of state. It is indeed here that the interaction between politics and religion is easiest to apprehend, at the point where religious belief motivates people to action. However, both political scientists and anthropologists seem to experience difficulty in getting to grips with religion in Africa. The main reason for this is that some fundamental aspects of religion in Africa do not easily fit into the core assumptions of academic disciplines that descend from a literary and theological tradition 2,000 years old, which represents religion within African societies in cultural terms rather than as the locus of substantive ideas. Even the spectacular rise in adherence to the universal religions of Islam and Christianity has not changed this tradition of viewing religious practice in Africa as an essentially cultural matter. Quite a few writers on politics exclude religion from their scope of analysis altogether, regarding religion as something divorced from the material world and the world of politics.
An accurate analysis of the relation between religion and politics has to take account of the extent to which, in time-honoured fashion, the invisible world is perceived to be the place of origin of all power – not only political power in the conventional sense, but the very ability to live and to prosper. The South African theologian Allan Anderson summarizes the idea, widespread in Africa, that all forms of sickness and misfortune are related to a lack of power as a whole. ‘Our life, our very existence is inextricably tied up with power. To live is to have power, to be sick or to die is to have less of it’, he writes (Anderson 1991: 67). It is in order to achieve a condition of wholeness that people feel the need to consult religious specialists for purposes of what we may call self-empowerment. Spiritual power, for this reason, is described by Anderson as ‘enabling power,’ which allows people to take control of situations they are otherwise unable to master. It is worth noting in passing that the ability of power in the most general sense to shape people’s lives is recognized in many parts of the world, and indeed many definitions of political power include some consideration of its ability to transform those over whom it is exercised (Schatzberg 2001: 38–40). In the case of Africa, the search for power from the invisible world is common to the bulk of the population, from the highest to the lowest. This produces an atmosphere of intimacy in the spiritual domain in spite of the vast gulf in wealth and lifestyle that distinguishes Africa’s upper classes from the very poor.
The fact that power in Africa has ceased to be located primarily in the formal apparatus of the state and the whole range of institutions and practices introduced in colonial times makes it still more urgent for people to search for power that will effectively protect them. Many people easily turn to the spirit world for effective remedies for their troubles and insecurities, notably in the form of medicines that can protect and heal them. In this regard the concept of medicine implies more than just a medium for curing a physical ailment. A medicine is an instrument for channelling power from the spirit world, which may be either harmful or protective according to the ambivalent nature of the spirit world itself. There are ‘good’ medicines designed to cure illness and amulets to ward off danger, but also ‘bad’ medicines that are intended to transmit harmful forces, sometimes referred to as ‘magical charms’, juju, and so on, used for offensive purposes.
A typical circumstance calling for closer contact with the spirit world could be, for example, a serious illness, infertility, or impotence, but it could also be something as mundane as long-term unemployment or other forms of ‘bad luck’– anything that diminishes the quality of life. By the same token, ‘good luck’ may be sought from the spirit world actively, such as for safe travel or success in school exams. African footballers routinely pray when they take to the field for a match, and have been known to take a range of other spiritual measures intended to secure victory. Riots have occurred when a team or its supporters find evidence of countermeasures by the opposing team, such as burying juju (i.e. power objects) under the goalmouth with the aim of attracting the ball into the net (Schatzberg 2001: 121–29). Entire sports teams may consult healers before matches. Likewise, politicians, too, may seek spiritual power in order to succeed in elections or in other aspects of their struggle for position and influence.
Getting access to spiritual power is deemed to be a field in which women excel. At the heart of women’s perceived spiritual qualities is the belief that they are by nature closer than men to the spirit world due to their ability to produce new life. As in many other parts of the world, there is evidence that people think there to be a connection between women’s fertility and a dimension of spiritual knowledge from which men are excluded, causing them to respect and fear women at the same time (King 1989: ch. 4). This is probably one reason why women are more likely than men to be accused of witchcraft. The capacity of women to produce new life in the form of children is shared by deities, which in some traditions are also considered able to reproduce by creating new versions of themselves that can be transported from a ‘mother’ shrine to a new site (e.g. Rattray 1923: ch. 16).
Women are prominent as leaders of the thousands of independent churches in Africa that are known particularly for their healing activities. West Africa even has female Muslim sheikhs (Coulon and Reveyrand 1990). One new religious movement in Ghana, Zetaheal Mission, combines elements of both Christianity and Islam and is led by a woman (Atiemo 2003). Typically, such movements start when a person, male or female, is recognized as being called by a powerful spirit, and then goes on to become established as a religious specialist. In Christian belief, such a calling is seen as the work of the Holy Spirit. The historical mainline mission churches – those that emerged from the experience of European mission – tend to accord a far less prominent role to this spirit than African indigenous churches, more familiar with spirit belief, generally do. In mainline churches the power of the spirit is usually mediated by professional male functionaries, who may doubt the legitimacy of any unregulated vocation. Women leaders are therefore not easily accommodated into these churches, as the continuing debate on women’s ordination in the Catholic Church indicates. Hence, women are more likely to establish their own independent congregations.
Spiritual Insecurity
Africans today are confronted with a formidable range of problems, from economics to epidemics. To judge from the popular literature sold on the streets of African cities, stories on the radio and in the newspapers, sermons preached in the astonishing variety of churches, and rumours swapped through the oral communication known in African French as radio trottoir, many people consider these matters in a spiritual idiom. Although people are well aware of the material reasons for many of their difficulties, many also think about problems – from AIDS to food shortages to corruption – as having their deepest explanation in the actions of powerful people who manipulate the spirit world (Ellis and ter Haar 2004: chs 1 and 2). This is not in the first instance because of a lack of technical information, as most people seem well aware of the ways in which AIDS is transmitted or the techniques by which public monies are embezzled. However, public education campaigns about safe sex do not necessarily change popular ideas about the origins of AIDS, and nor do campaigns for good governance always prevent corruption.
Popular literature circulating in Africa suggests a widespread preoccupation with evil and its manifestations in daily life. There are numerous accounts of a spiritual underworld where people may make money through contracts that promise worldly riches in return for a pact with the Devil. Stories of witches and sinister ghosts and spirits are popular in television soap operas and video fictions and are discussed in radio phone-ins. They are a common topic of conversation. Yet the spiritual dimension does not displace more prosaic explanations for Africa’s problems, such as poor governance or an unjust world order. Rather, many people merge religious and secular modes of explanation, so that secular forces like imperialism or neo-colonialism are assumed to have a spiritual component.
Although there is evidence that Africans have thought about the world in terms of a spirit idiom throughout recorded history, they have not always had such a bleak view as in recent years. The old techniques for managing the spirit world do not work any longer, and the traditional spirit world itself has increasingly come to be seen as inherently evil. There are at least three reasons why people have come to see the traditional spirit world this way. First, there has been a gradual demonization of the spirit world over a long period, dating back to the nineteenth century evangelization of Africa by foreign missionaries. As a result, the traditional spirit world has lost much of its original morally neutral character. Second, the traditional religious specialists who used to have the authority to regulate relations between the human and the spirit worlds have lost much of their influence as a result of developments during the twentieth century. Factors that have eroded it include: the institution of a secular state apparatus; social changes that undermine the standing of the village elders and notables who officiate in traditional religious cults; and Western education, secular or Christian. Traditional experts today are often ridiculed by younger people and despised by adherents of new religious movements, including Islamists and ‘born-again’ Christians. There are raging debates between advocates of a return to tradition and those, including the more radical Pentecostals, who maintain that indigenous practices, or indeed any religious actions not based on explicit scriptural authority, are evil. Third, since the spirit world is to some extent a reflection of the material world, it is not surprising that it mirrors the adverse conditions that so many African countries have undergone in recent decades. After a century of rapid and profound change, there is considerable confusion about what precisely constitutes good and evil, including in such important matters as making war, while in many countries there is no consensus on which authorities are competent to pronounce on such matters.
As a result of this situation, people have lost the means to resolve the great number of problems that are nowadays often attributed to evil spirits and witches. This has been widely noted by Western anthropologists, among others, who have in recent years produced a series of works on witchcraft in Africa (e.g. Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Geschiere 1997), and on the theologies of evil in charismatic churches (e.g. Meyer 1999). People who are believed to manipulate the spirit world for selfish purposes include politicians and plutocrats, certainly. Above all, though, witchcraft accusations concern neighbours and family members.
Concerns about evil spirits and witchcraft accusations have been addressed extensively by African academics too, especially theologians and scholars of religion. Their work has received rather little attention from European and North American scholars (ter Haar 2007). In part, the reason for this neglect may be that African authors have published work locally, and not always in forms that are easily accessible internationally. A good deal of the literature produced in Africa may not immediately appear to Western scholars to be of academic relevance as it emerges from theological debates, often assumed by social scientists to have little or no bearing on their own work. Over the years, African theologians have been concerned particularly with pastoral approaches to spiritual problems, including problems of evil and witchcraft (Lagerwerf 1987 provides a bibliography of some older works), and many clerical intellectuals have addressed the same issues (e.g. Hebga 1982; Milingo 1984). More recent African writers include Elizabeth Amoah (1986) and Seratwa Ntloedibe-Kuswani (2007) on witchcraft accusations against women. Similarly, the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians is a network of female authors who have published on aspects of religious and social life in Africa and their effects on women. Other contemporary African writers on witchcraft include Thias Kgatla (1995, 2003) on South Africa, Elom Dovlo (2007) on Ghana, Augustine Musopole (1993) on witchcraft terminology and hermeneutics, and Elias Bongmba (2001) on the moral aspects of witchcraft, to mention only a few.
Conclusion
The resilience of religion the world over has been one of the greatest surprises of recent decades. Many classic works of social science considered the ‘disenchantment’ of the world – to use Weber’s phrase – as an inevitable accompaniment of the rise of modern states and modern economies. Classic theories of development paid no attention to religion, simply because it seemed irrelevant to the processes they were analysing other than, perhaps, as an obstacle to modernization (ter Haar and Ellis 2006). The fact that many African countries are now enjoying high rates of economic growth (Ellis 2011) should not be interpreted as a sign that the importance of religion will now decline. On the contrary, religion and politics, subject to institutional separation in colonial times, are likely to be increasingly connected.
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