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Ghana’s witch villages protect an outcast class Witches gather for protection, acceptance in communities of their own. By Tim Sullivan ASSOCIATED PRESS Writer GAMBAGA, Ghana Stopping for a moment from grinding her small ration of mil let, the young woman smiles ner vously and says, no, she’s not sure exactly what she did to come to this place. All she knows is a little boy died. And she was blamed. And with accusations of witchcraft seething in her village, she was attacked by former friends and neighbors. Eventually, her family turned against her, and her husband brought her to Gambaga, a dusty town 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the nearest paved road that offers refuge to more than 100 women accused of witchcraft. They live in a cluster of mud walled compounds out on the edge of town, hoping to reclaim someday a little piece of their lives. “Idon’t know what happened,” says the woman, who goes only by the name Banga and who now believes that she somehow did put a curse on her nephew, mak ing him sick and finally killing him. “Only God can tell. I don’t know how I did it,” she says. . In a country where cellular .phones and satellite TV mix freely with age-old beliefs in the ‘supernatural, where everyone from Cabinet ministers to mis sionaries believes in witchcraft, the “witch villages” of northern Ghana have become the center -of a debate over how a modern government should deal with sometimes brutal traditions. If the witches of Gambaga live in abject poverty, forbidden from leaving without permission, their “ghettoisalso oneofthe few places ‘where they are safe. “If T go back I would not sur ‘vive,” says one woman, Hawa, who came to Gambaga a few ‘months ago. “The father of the “"baby I bewitched would hunt me down.” For centuries, witchcraft has been used in this part of the ‘world to explain natural phenom ‘enon, from polio to impotence. “The accused often are elderly women, the weakest members of Have a nice park them? A -‘ : [0 =G “There’s no place for kids here.” “The apartment is too small for kids.” “We only allow two people in a housing choice use you;w have children could be discrimination. You can fight back. | unfair housing practices, covy::d Hfiooryw'now Fair Housing Center. Everyone deserves a fair chance, L u.s\. uu-cuam 1-800-927-9275 oe R : e g\ 4 ‘*:’ | ‘ %f-"?:e A J ’i.’";",‘u % \\ gX P b " \ ; /8 g ‘ ;‘\ O "\ X 4 E B \‘. oio R . ‘ - ‘ w\ * \ B - AL ‘ - S Lo " o, IR T /,: &y e\4 g % R ok = YRORER T - S {l\ NRR b% £ e J : e \ ;,,",”_ L - % AR ;:\:Qfl m Chief Yahaya Wune, left, sits in his palace with two residents of the “wiich village” he over sees in the village of Gambaga, Ghana Nov. 29, 1997. Gambanga is one of Ghana’s “witch villages,” where women accused of sorcery live after being chased oway from their homes. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder) African village life. Many times it is a jealous neighbor or an other wife in a polygamous household who makes the witch craft accusation. Women accused of sorcery have few choices but to seek protec tion in a witch village. There, the chief is believed to have the ability to drain a witch’s powers before shunting her off to live in the sorcerers ghetto, where most of the women eventually come to believe they really are witches. Gambaga, a collection of mud and-thatch huts and colonial-era fieldstone buildings, is one of the three known witch villages re maining in Ghana. During the last century, nearly every village in the region had its own witch ghetto, but they gradually dis appeared under pressure from missionaries and British colonial authorities. Gambaga has a population of a few thousand, about 130 of them accused witches. It looks pretty much like every other town _ except that the witches’ camp is spotlessly neat. “No men,” one woman explains. The alleged witches of Gambaga, most of them in their 40s and 50s, are mostly unedu cated and come from small, ru ral villages, where fear of witch craft runs deepest. Many will spend decades in the camp, liv ing there until they die. Most are desperately poor. While the chief offers the women protec tion and the eventual promise of a proper burial, he provides them with little food. Instead, they rely on charity, the sale of firewood 96,9’-@\2 _ N/ ol RISV AN i and the food they receive from working in the chief’s fields. Ruling over Gambaga is Chief Yahaya Wune, a sometimes be nevolent autocrat with a firm be lief in the righteousness of the witches ghetto. “It’s not by magic that I keep them,” he says through a transla tor. “It’smerely a tradition handed down from generation to genera tion to provide sanctuary.” The witches ghetto stands near the humble, thatch-roofed dwell ing that the chief calls his palace, Yahaya's rule has changed little from the days when his forefa thersran Gambaga. Here, his word is law, and he is greeted with bows and hand-clapping when he walks through town with his black, wooden staff. 2 Hebecomes angry when he talks about the accusations leveled against the witch villages from hundreds of miles away in Accra, the capital. “What crime have I committed?” he demands. “Those that actually did it — are proved to be witches — I accept,” hesays. “But we settled them here to prevent them from being at tacked.” Still, after existing quietly for at least 150 years, the witch villages have become a political issue. Government officials, rights ac tivists and church groups decry them as inhumane prisons where elderly women languish unless the chief decides they no longer pose a threat and their home villages will take them back. Freed witches must also repay the chief for his protection, giving him a goat, some 96.9 The Touch presents Magic Mornings Monday - Friday 6am -10 am with ' Tom Joyner & Mechelle Jordan chickens and the equivalent of about $lO, asizable payment for a Ghanaian villager. “It is obnoxious and is a viola tion of the rights of women,” says Ama Benyiwa-Doe, Ghana’s deputy minister of employment and social welfare, who wants to ban the villages and prosecute the chiefs. But even critics concede that in a country where an accusation of witchcraft can be adeath sentence, the witch villages provide a neces sery haven. The chief “is not a cruel man,” says the Rev. Emmanuel Arongo, the Anglican bishop for the Gambagaregion and a harsh critic of the camps. “What he’s able to do, he does.” Some activists say that instead of closing the havens, the govern ment should improve the lives of the women by providing aid, par ticularly deliveries of food and clean water. As for the women, some dream of the day when their accusers die off and they can return to their own villages, but for others the witch ghettos become their real homes. “I won’t go anywhere,” says Banga, her 3-year-old daughter standing silently beside her while she works in front of their tiny hut. She says she misses parts of the life she left behind, especially her elder daughter and her husband. They visit from time totime, Banga says, but even if given the chance, she won'’t return to her former village. “I don’t want to go back,” she says. “This is my home.” Gingrich attacks bilingual education hßy Lori Wiechman ASSOCIATED PRESS Writer SMYRNA, Ga. In a speech that could foretell some of the m. battles in theupcoming yearinCon gress, House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked bilingual edu cation today and called for a na tional debate on drugs, education, tax cuts and retirement benefits. The Georgia Republican urged that all school children learn En glish by the fourth grade but said it should be up to local schools, not thefederal government, toachieve that goal. “When we allow childien to stay trapped in bilirgual programs where they do not learn English, we are destroying their economic future,” he said. He also proposed a commission to outline ways to buttress Social Security for the retirement of the big Baby Boom generation, which will begin in a decade. He made no suggestions about how the mas sive program should be altered but seemed to suggest that such changes don’t have to mean re duced benefits. “Anyone who thinks you’re go ing to have painful choices in So cial Security doesn’t understand the marketplace,” said Gingrich. Gingrich made his remarks while visiting his home district in a speech to the Cobb County Cham ber of Commerce. Though he made no specific legislative proposals, the speaker’s comments seem likely to help shape the upcoming election-year session of Congress and beyond. Gingrich said his four goals are to create a drug-free America for children, to improve education, to protect Americans’ retirementand to reform taxes. “If we would focus on these four areas, we could dramatically change the country,” he said. The speaker proposed that ev ery student spend one day a year reading the Declaration of Inde pendence, the Constitution and AugustafFOQCUS FOCUS on a unique gift: Buy ad space in the Augusta Focus for that special someone or someplace. Call 724-7855 to arrange your purchases. s, . g p ol o . e o . : fi« O ", o . o, i 'i( & et W s ’ e T A el T i # A e P g ‘:-.;" ‘> 4 3 i \ \« " & .‘__'c A L . R L~ W - { AUGUS' ous JANUARY 8, 1998 the Federalist Papers, including “It’s im; for any judge _ even with an ACLU lawsuit _ to argue that a teacher should not explain what the word ‘creator’ means in the Declaration of Inde pendence, sinceitisasecular docu ment,” Gingrich said. “It will do all of us good if every child begins to learn that they're endowed by the Creator and, by the way, so is the person next to them. So if you're a rapist, the person you're raping is endowed by God.” Poorly performing schools should be identified and their ad ministrators asked what their plan is for improving the school in the next 30 days, Gingrich said. “If they don’t have a good answer, we frankly ought toreplace the people in charge.” On taxes, Gingrich said the na tion needs to define what percent age of income the government can take from each individual. “I would suggest that, in peace time, our goal should be that all three levels _ state, local and fed eralgovernments_should not take more than 25 percent” compared with 38 percent now, he said. He declined to offer specific tax cutting plans but said he wants to eliminate capital gains and inher itance taxes. He also said the first ‘goal should be to have a federal budget surplus. He said he hopes President Clinton will endorse the commis sion so it can begin work this sum mer and Congress can act in 1999. “There’s no crisis, but there’s a long, steady problem unless we invent a better model” for Social Security, he said. “We can avoid generational warfareif we will have a dialogue about creating the best retirement system in the world.” Ondrugs, Gingrich said he wants tointroduce legislation expanding the powers of the nation’s drug czar to seal off borders, go after “drug dealers and raise costs for drug users. 3B