Inside a Witch's Cottage

The Northern Advocate is the only paper for northern Ghana.  Published by African Initiatives’ partner, Rumnet, it is a tool for social justice by raising awareness, issues, rights and democratic accountability.  In their September issue they highlighted the treatment of women accused of being witches. Abdullah Kassim, the editor and Director of Rumnet, reports.

A Gross Abuse of Human Rights

“They say I am a witch, I ate my own son.” She says, sobbing.  Her colleagues remind her of the warning by the cottage keeper, a witch doctor, that none of them must weep while talking.  She dabs her tears with her tattered wrapper and steels herself.

Her countenance dissolves into palpable contortions of bitterness and she stutters: “But deep inside me I know that I am not a witch.”

Sana Yaha is a 75 year old.  She is wearing a faded, saggy old green t-shirt over a patchy blue tie-and-dye cloth.  Around her head is a multi-colour scarf through which here dishevelled grey hairs spread onto her wrinkled forehead.  Her wizened face is livened by a yellow beaded necklace that lies carelessly from her nape to the cleavage of her flabby breast.

As she speaks she reveals a couple of cola-stained teeth that is all that remains in her mouth.  “The youth of Zinindo said I killed my son.” Sana repeats, wincing.  “But I did not do it.  I protested vehemently but it fell on deaf ears.  They threatened to kill me so my brother brought me to this place.”

Sana is one of the inmates of a witches’ cottage 167 kilometres from Tamale, capital of Northern Region.  She has lived in the cottage for 10 years .  The cottage is a safe haven for women who have been accused of being witches and banished from their communities.

The cottage is as old as Kpatinga village.  It is a cluster of twenty small round dilapidated mud huts, each measuring about six feet in diameter and five feet high.  Their withering brown thatch roofs are lost in a luxurious maize farm that surrounds them.  Therein dwell 29 old women – languishing against their will.  None of them is apparently below 70 years, all of them are accused of being witches.

“Alhassan, who they claimed I killed, was my first born.  He was fifty years old.  How can I kill my own son?” Sana asks, struggling to hold back the tears welling up in her eyes.

 . . . . . (The youth of the village believed that Sana had killed her son.) . . . .

Sana’s senior brother, Yakubu Sugri, an 85 year old farmer, talks about his sister’s banishment from the village.  (Her husband had died)

“They were wielding clubs, cudgels, machetes and stones, ready to lynch her. Sensing danger the Chief told me that the youth represented the community so we should listen to what they were saying. …. They were so anxious to harm her that we had to sneak her out to Kpatinga to save her life.”

The Chief of Sana’s village is at a loss what to say.  According to him he was not on the throne when Sana’s case happened so it is difficult for him to intervene, even though she has been exonerated.

Sana says “Each morning when I wake up I say my prayers. After that I, with my colleagues, go round to forage fro grains from farms that have been harvested already.  We come home and feed on whatever we are lucky to get.  There are times when we don’t get anything and have to live on the generosity of the cottage keeper or to go to labour on some farms.  The hardest is time is the dry season when the farms are no more and food is hard to come by.  Hunger becomes our lot.”

The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice has a daunting task of facilitating their reintegration.  “This is a tradition. We can use all the legal means at our disposal to make them go back to their communities but the danger is that they could be killed anytime something goes wrong.”

Damatu Haruna is about 82 years old.  She is sitting on the floor cracking groundnuts.  She cannot say how long she has been in the cottage. I came here along time ago. I had eleven children, only 2 are alive now, the rest are dead.  My own son brought me to this cottage.  My son said wherever he passed people whispered among themselves that I was a witch. I could have gone to the police but it takes money to do that and I have no money so I am relying on people like you to assist me to return to my village.””