Society and lifestyle

What should you know about witchcraft in Senegal?

Witchcraft is one of the most rebellious social practices of our societies full of contradictions, torn between tradition and modernity.

Indeed, at this time when reason reigns supreme over the world, through discoveries such as new information and communication technologies, it is easy to realize that man still carries within him a good deal of irrationality which justifies its incessant recourse to strange practices that ordinary common sense cannot explain.

You just have to be a bit observant to notice at several street corners or at crossroads in the capital, Dakar, these cola nuts, these broken canaries, these tree barks, these cowries, these grains of rice or millet or sesame or whatever, to realize the reality of addiction in humans. If the Europeans have their clairvoyants, their mediums, their magi, we in Africa have our charlatans, our “marabouts,” our healers ...

If we meet these African masters of occult sciences in all the countries of the continent, it is important to specify that Senegal, which is the country of origin of most of the great “marabouts” of the continent, abounds in a good quantity, among which a multitude of scoundrels who feed on the suffering or despair of others.

What, in general, drives women and men to go to a “marabout?” It must be said that the motivations vary from person to person, from one reason to another. The most frequent subjects that lead to the “marabout” are, among others: the quest for power, money, promotion, revenge or protection against real or imagined enemies. But others also go to the marabout out of sheer malice.

Obviously, this practice very often upsets the balance of several households and several families and contributes to instilling a climate of mistrust and mistrust tinged with contempt in households or families.

A 43-year-old man selling traditional medicines at the Guédiawaye, a city in the Greater Dakar Area, market told us anonymously that the photo below represents his own way of captivating anyone whose position he covets. And there are many who, like our anonymous confidant, use the practices of black magic rituals to defeat an embarrassing competitor for them.

Here, we no longer speak of religion or God. Silence, we tie! A good ear ...