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Diola witchcraft

According to beliefs documented at the end of the twentieth century, the elders of the Diola people of the Department of Oussouye in Senegal, but who also live in Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea, believed in witches.

Witch characteristics

The Diola conceptualized witches as beings who are privy to the spiritual world and able to travel nocturnally without their bodies. They were also believed capable of assuming animal shapes.

In Diola society, witches were considered to adhere to a strict hierarchy. They could be differentiated from their human counterparts for their tendency to show their wealth in a conspicuous manner. Potential witches would also be identified by their resistance to sharing their wealth.

Poisoning was often used to differentiate between witches and non-witches throughout the Diola region, resulting in the death of thousands of inhabitants of rural communities.

The primary method of harm employed by witches as conceived by the Diola was cannibalizing their victims’ souls. This consumption was understood to take place in the world of dreams. Two main types of witches can be identified as playing a role in Diola cultural beliefs: kusaye and kussanga. The term kussanga denotes a secret society of cannibalistic individuals believed to exist in society. The kussanga would acquire supernatural powers as a result of their cannibalism. Like the regular witches, or kusaye, the kussanga utilized their powers to eat victims’ souls. Unlike the kusaye, they would eat their victims’ flesh as well. Kussanga would carry out a disinterment in order to  consume their victims’ bodies; however, this removal of bodies took place in the spirit world, not in graveyards of the Diola society of the waking world. The so-called cannibalism of Diola witches was believed to manifest itself through a loss of vitality and energy in a victim, eventually followed by death.

Religious context

Christianity and Islam were not major religions of the Diola until after World War II. Before that point, the Awasena faith, an indigenous belief system, was the most common and defining religion ofthe area. According to the Awasena belief system, there is a supreme being named Emitai who created various spirits, each of which is connected to particular shrines, known as ukine. The spirits held an intermediary role between the Diola people and Emitai.

Political context

Prior to World War 1, Diola communities remained distant from colonizing European authorities. In Senegal, the French colonial power’s focus on northern Senegal – due to its peanut-growing potential – meant that the Diola were for the most part able to avoid French interference. World War I marked French recognition of their lack of control over the Diola, with the latter resisting taxes and military recruitment. In the wake of World War 1, the French recruited Benjamin Diatta as a local authority over the Department of Oussouye. At the same time a policy of open opposition was adopted with regard to Diola religion, as the belief system’s priests were, along with women, identified as the primary inspirers of resistance throughout the community.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, the number of witchcraft accusations skyrocketed in the colonial context.^{[citation needed]}

A loss of autonomy in colonized Diola communties in the twentieth century has also been tied to a surge in Awasena religious traditions, and, consequentially, witchcraft accusations.

In many communities across the continent, newly-colonized African leaders identified “spiritual pollution” due to witchcraft practices as the cause of the European conquest. Scholars have noted the colonial imagination as having a preoccupation with supposed witchcraft behavior in the African colonies; Robert M. Baum notes that witchcraft accusations were seen not as a result of “colonial conquest but as a justification for the colonial presence and its ‘mission civilisatrice’”.

Diola witch trials

The Diola witch trials were a series of trials held in colonial Senegal in the Casamance region of the country. The trials began in 1926. Most of the arrests took place in the Department of Oussouye. The majority of the population of that region at the time were followers of the Awasena religion. The leader of the investigation and primary witness through each trial was named Benjamin Diatta.

Throughout the Diola witch trials, witchcraft behavior was described in metaphoric language of various kinds, including cannibalism, maternity, and agriculture.

Local administrators understood the committed crimes to be actual cannibalism, whereas the majority of the Diola community understood the crimes to be spiritual crimes taking place in the spirit world.

The priest-king of Kadjinol linked the creation of witches with maternal production, drawing a parallel between the corrupting of an eminent witch and the nature of having a child.^Clarify He is quoted as saying, “You have a child; perhaps it will be evil.”

The language of agriculture has also been used in analyzing witchcraft in the Diola context: “When witches attacked, they carried off the victim’s soul, leaving him or her like a husk of rice with no substance or strength to sustain life”.