Throughout history, there have been many cases of witchcraft. Many of these spawn from personal fears and lack of knowledge, while others hold merit and substantial evidence of the supernatural. The cases to be looked at will be Madumo: A Man Bewitched, as well as the witch-hunt in Germany, 1628. Although the contrast is great, there are many similarities. In this essay, both will be intensely examined.
In Madumo: A Man Bewitched, the events focus around one specific case, Madumo, which takes place in South Africa in the early 1990s. The author, Adam Ashforth, first met Madumo on June 16, 1990. This was the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Revolt. During this time, the government was very unstable. As the country tried to develop a democracy “”Residents suffered mysterious terrorist attacks on their homes and in trains. Beloved leaders were killed. It seemed as if secret forces within the government were mounting a concerted conspiracy to thwart the political birthright of the people.”1
The people of South Africa, while looking for hope, only found disappointment. “…the benefits expected from democracy failed to materialize for the majority of the population. Jobs were few; wages were low. The value of the rand fell, resulting in a steep rise in the price of the imported consumer good that are so essential to marking status. The young men who had been feted as the Young Lions of the Struggle were now left to loiter on street corners. They soon found other avenues for expressing themselves and securing the means of status; crime and violence remained rampant.”2
This phenomenon allowed the citizens to describe any kind of oddity to be associated with witchcraft. This is the world that Madumo came about it. After the death of his mother, along with his brother’s accusation of him being involved in witchcraft, Madumo would soon become another victim to bewitchment.
In 1628, Germany was in dire condition. To start, they were facing a horrid crop year. “…Bad weather in the 1620s was causing crop failures, famine, and plague. Instead of considering natural causes or the mistakes of politicians, people would blame mysterious witches, in league with the Devil, for these misfortunes.”3 This was a result from a too harsh winter and too wet spring for crops. This resulted in a countrywide famine.
To increase the death toll, the Black Death was at its peak. The Black Death resulted in 20-30 million deaths in Europe alone. In Germany, the Black Death killed of a total of 20% of its population.4 Combined with the famine, the people of Germany were in complete dismay. They were looking to their government for answers, and the government was looking for a scapegoat. To compensate for their lack of understanding, they decided to put up a fog screen and attack the pagans, a minority group that they did not understand.
In Madumo’s case, it was concluded that the one who bewitched him was the reason for his misfortune. His brother’s accusation stemmed from the Zion Christian Church. They told him that it was because of Madumo that their mother was dead. Madumo said in a letter to Ashforth: “The other thing they were saying was that I had killed my mother. They said my father was collaborating with our elder brother and I was one of the conspirators; that I had made an inside job. They said my father gave our elder brother a herb that he then gave to me because I am very close with my mother. So they said I was the one who knew where to pour the herb in her food where it will be effective to kill her. To kill our mother. My younger brother is a staunch member of the Zion Christian Church. A prophet at church told him that.”5
To resolve Madumo’s problem, he decided to go see Mr. Zondi. Mr. Zondi is a specialist in removing hexes from those who are bewitched. To resolve it, Madumo had this to say, “He [Mr. Zondi] said that they used the soil from my mother grave [to curse him]. …They took that soil soon after she was buried, and they mixed their herbs in with it. I have to go to my mother’s grave and take some soil back to Mr. Zondi. Then he’ll mix herbs with that soil and wash me with the mixture. Then that witchcraft will go back to that one who sent it. They will be the one suffering misfortunes.”6
Germany, on the other hand, took a different context. It was not considered something that affected just the person bewitched, but rather society as a whole. By blaming people that were thought to be involved with witchcraft, it took the attention off of the shortcomings of the government, and put them on society.
It also allowed people who were thought to worship the devil, or gods who didn’t conform to the Roman Catholic Church, to be put into the spotlight and put fear into those who were devote Catholics. The German government told their citizens that witches were behind the plague and failed crops that were killing so many people. To quote the villagers in Beauty and the Beast, “We don’t like what we don’t understand, in fact it scares us, and this monster is mysterious at least.”7
Unlike in Madumo, the problem was neither contained nor resolved due to the actions taken. The plague was actually caused by a flea on a rat and the failed crops were because of a weather phenomenon. However, in the governments attempt to control the situation, they used the excuse of pagan gods and witchcraft to execute many of its own people. And instead of looking for a real solution, it may have harmed itself more by focusing on the people that they did not, nor care to, understand.
The situation of Madumo can best be described as a contingency. Madumo, up until the point of his mother’s death, lived a normal life. There was never bad luck in his life, as there was after her passing. Once Madumo’s curse started to affect him greatly, there was a place he could go to help him get rid of the curse. Once the steps were taken, the curse would possibly leave him. This possibility is proof that it was a short phenomenon that, although it would horrify Madumo for the rest of his life, was short lived and Madumo would soon go back to his life.
In the case of the German witch-hunt, it was also a contingency. When the German witch-hunt occurred, it was the first time that such genocide would take at such an alarming rate. Although it would carry into different countries, and would take nearly 200 years to end, the execution of so many people in the name of sorcery would not be seen again. However, the effects of it would be felt for years and years to come.
Although the case study of Madumo was limited to himself and the events focused around him, he was not the only one to be ostracized by the people of South Africa. Madumo was not the only one in South Africa to be accused at the time of Witchcraft. However, after so long of being accused, Madumo started to believe that he really was cursed. He eventually turns to Mr. Zondi for help. Being that Mr. Zondi had an established business, with a set of steps to go through, there had to be a market for those bewitched.
In German, between the accusations of witchcraft, and the consistent deaths from the plague and famine, the deaths that occurred from witchcraft in Germany made matters worse in an already bad situation. Germany already lost nearly 20% of its population with the plague alone. With the wild accusations of witches floating around, it was a phenomenon that affected everybody, everyday, in every class.
In the case of Madumo, there was no set resolution. Instead, Adam Ashforth left Madumo after he took the steps set forth by Mr. Zondi. His curse is one that would be best described as an open-ended phenomenon. It was said that it could take a long time for the curse to go away. So although the curse may eventually disappear from Madumo, it is not know if it did or did not or if it ever would.
In Germany, “Helena Curtens and Agnes Olmanns were the last women to be executed as witches in Germany, in 1738. The last execution in Switzerland was that of Anna Göldi in 1782, whose execution was at the time widely denounced throughout Switzerland and Germany as state-sponsored murder. (Göldi’s trial was not technically a “witch trial” since explicit allegations of witchcraft were avoided in the official trial).”8
By the time of the last execution, the Black Death, or plague, was already starting to disappear. “There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form, after the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720-1722[12] and the 1771 plague in Moscow it seems to have disappeared from Europe in the 18th century.”9 This combined with a successful year for crops led to people to become more rational about the causes for the misfortune of the country.
In Madumo, the effects seem to be a limited one. It was focused to Madumo himself. Although this may have affected more people in the same way it did Madumo, we cannot safely say this, as nobody else was examined in the book in as much depth as himself. However, to Madumo, this phenomenon was a large part of his life. To the microscopic examination, the personal effect was great. But to the macroscopic examination, the effects of Madumo’s curse were very limited and in the historical context, virtually irrelevant.
In Germany, with the loss of nearly one third of the population in Europe, the world had lost an entire generation that could have produced new inventions, music, art, etc. The witch-hunt in Germany only added to this figure. When word got out of the witch-hunt to the rest of the world, many would follow Germany’s example. This model set the stage for a worldwide genocide that the world would feel the effects from for over 200 years.
Although there are a lot of stark contrasts between Madumo: A Man Bewitched and Germany in 1628, there are also a lot of similarities. Both affected the people who were deemed bewitched to the point where it ruined their lives. These events should be lessons for society; that even when you do not understand something does not mean it is evil, and instead of pointing the finger and making rash decisions, sometimes you have to step back and reevaluate the situation at hand. Only then will we start to be able to accept people who we consider different.
Notes:
1 Adam Ashforth. Madumo A Man Bewitched (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 82 IBID., 9.3 Brian A. Pavlac. A Witch Hunt: Germany 1628–Historical Background Prof. Pavlac’s Women’s History Resource Site. Last Revised February 3, 2004. URL: http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/witch/hunt/whbg.html. November 13, 2007.4 Wikipedia. Black Death Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death. Internet; accessed 13 November 2007.5 Ashforth, 186 IBID, 667 Beauty and the Beast, Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, 81 minutes, Walt Disney Pictures, 1991, Videocassette.8 Wikipedia. Witch-hunt. Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt#Number_of_executions. Internet; accessed 14 November 2007.
