Cosmologies in turmoil: witchfinding and AIDS in Chiawa, Zambia

Abstract

Abstract Written from the perspective of HIV/AIDS prevention research in Zambia, the article argues that rural Africans now find themselves the target of three competing and contradictory discourses about responsibility, each of which claims to tell them how to lead safe lives free from AIDS. The first, represented by the biomedical paradigm, professes sure knowledge about the aetiology and epidemiology of HIV/AIDS but is unable to cure it; the second, the missionary discourse, preaches abstinence and encourages a revival of traditional beliefs and rules of morality as the only way to manage and survive AIDS; while the third is the traditional discourse—represented by traditional healers and witchfinders—which professes sure knowledge and the ability to eradicate evil. My argument is that the conjunction of these discourses results in a confusion that has led to the ascendancy of what is here termed traditional African discourse, characterised by a resurgence of witchcraft accusations and witchfinding activities; the conjuncture thus provides explanatory models through which rural Africans can make sense of their lives in situations where modern certainties appear to have failed. The traditional African discourse offers an explanation for increasing death rates—presumably from AIDS—and for other contingent disasters which are believed to be caused by witches. These points are brought home in an extended case study of the activities of a witchfinder invited by one rural community to help them ‘defuse’ local witches. The witchfinder not only managed to usurp legitimate authority but succeeded in killing sixteen local people through poison ordeals before national media coverage led to his arrest by the authorities. A further concern of the article is to highlight the importance of envybased notions of disease causality and how these notions relate to efforts at behavioural change in AIDS prevention work and to mechanisms that can lead to the breakdown of legitimate authority in rural Africa today.

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