The lengthy history of witch accusations from Europe to Africa

 

While accusations of witchcraft have largely disappeared in Europe, they have been rising in several parts of Africa, where cultural, social, and economic pressures continue to fuel such allegations.

Across many African communities today, accusations of witchcraft continue to shape social life in painful ways. Elderly women are beaten, children are forced to confess, and entire families are stigmatized because someone believes misfortune must have a supernatural cause.

 

Critics often argue that these accusations are rooted in superstition, poverty, or a lack of education. While these factors certainly play a role, the story is far more complex and far more universal than many people realize. What is happening in parts of Africa today is not an isolated cultural flaw. It is a chapter in a much older human story, one that Europe and America lived through with even greater brutality.

 

Modern documentaries, historical archives, and academic research reveal that the same patterns of fear, accusation, and violence once dominated Western societies for centuries. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Europe was consumed by witch hunts that led to the torture and execution of tens of thousands of people. Germany, France, Switzerland, and Scotland were among the worst affected.

 

According to historian Brian Levack, author of The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, an estimated 40,000–60,000 people were executed during this period. Most of them were women, often elderly, widowed, or socially vulnerable, the same demographic frequently targeted in African communities today. Europe’s witch hunts were not only widespread; they were exceptionally cruel.

 

Accused individuals were subjected to horrific torture designed to force confessions. Many were tied to stakes and burned alive in public squares, a spectacle meant to “purify” the community through fire. Others were strangled before burning, drowned in rivers, crushed under stones, or mutilated during interrogations.

 

The infamous “witch prickers” stabbed suspects with needles to find “devil’s marks,” while courts accepted confessions extracted under unbearable pain. In some regions, entire villages were wiped out by mass executions. By comparison, Africa’s modern witchcraft accusations, though tragic and unjust, rarely reach the industrial scale of violence that Europe once normalized.

 

The famous Salem witch trials in colonial America (1692–1693) are another reminder that fear and suspicion can overwhelm any society. Twenty people were executed, and hundreds were imprisoned based on nothing more than accusations, dreams, and community panic. The trials ended only when the governor’s own wife was accused, revealing how arbitrary and dangerous the system had become.

 

When we compare these histories, a pattern emerges: witchcraft accusations thrive in moments of social stress. In Europe, they intensified during periods of famine, disease, war, and economic instability. In Africa today, similar pressures, poverty, illness, unemployment, and weak social safety nets create fertile ground for suspicion.

 

When people lack scientific explanations or access to healthcare, they search for someone to blame. The accused becomes a symbolic target for collective fear. Another similarity lies in the role of authority. In Europe, religious leaders, judges, and even kings endorsed witch hunts. Today, in some African regions, certain pastors, traditional healers, or local power figures reinforce accusations for personal gain or influence.

 

The mechanism is the same: fear becomes a tool of control. Yet it is important to recognize that Africa is not “behind” Europe. Rather, Africa is experiencing a phase that Europe and America once went through, a phase driven by social anxiety, limited access to scientific knowledge, and the human tendency to explain the unknown through supernatural narratives.

 

As societies modernize, witchcraft accusations tend to decline, just as they did in the West. Understanding this shared history can help reduce stigma. It reminds us that witchcraft accusations are not an “African problem” but a human problem, one rooted in fear, misunderstanding, and the struggle to make sense of suffering.

 

It also highlights the need for education, mental health support, and stronger community structures to protect vulnerable people. The lesson from Europe and America is clear: societies can outgrow witch hunts. They can replace fear with knowledge and violence with compassion.

 

Africa is capable of the same transformation, and in many places, it has already begun. However, acknowledging the historical parallels helps us see that the path forward is not about blaming cultures; it is about understanding human nature and building systems that protect the innocent.

 

References

•             Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe.

•             Smithsonian Magazine, “What Really Happened During the Salem Witch Trials.”

•             BBC Documentary: The Pendle Witch Child;

•             United Nations Human Rights Council reports on witchcraft-related violence in Africa.

Rev. Jesse Jackson: The relentless drumbeat of justice

 

A powerful look at Rev. Jesse Jackson’s lifelong fight for justice, equality, and civil rights, highlighting his enduring impact on American social progress. Photo credit: chicago.suntimes.com

There are figures whose lives cannot be measured in years, but in the tremors they leave behind. Jesse Louis Jackson was one of them. His death at 84 does not silence his voice; it simply reminds us how deeply it had already entered the bloodstream of American history.

 

Jackson was not a man who waited for justice to arrive; he chased it, confronted it, demanded it, and carried millions with him along the way. He rose from the segregated South with a clarity of purpose that never dimmed.

 

Long before he became a national figure, Jackson understood that the struggle for Black dignity required more than outrage; it required organization, discipline, and a refusal to accept the limits imposed by a hostile society.

 

When he joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, he was not merely a young activist seeking direction; he was a force in formation. The night King was assassinated in Memphis, Jackson was there, and the weight of that moment shaped the rest of his life.

 

He stepped forward not as a replacement for King, no one could be, but as a man determined to keep the movement alive. Jackson’s genius was his ability to turn protest into an institution. Operation PUSH and later the Rainbow Coalition were not slogans; they were engines of empowerment.

 

He built bridges across race, class, and ideology, insisting that the poor, the marginalized, and the forgotten had a place in the American story. His famous affirmation, “I am somebody,” was more than a chant. It was a declaration of existence for people whom society had tried to erase.

 

His presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 were watershed moments. Jackson shattered the myth that America was not ready to take a Black candidate seriously. He won states, delegates, and hearts, proving that political imagination could be expanded.

Many of the coalitions that later helped elect the first Black president were first assembled by Jackson, who dared to run when the odds were stacked against him. He made the impossible seem inevitable. However, Jackson’s reach extended far beyond American borders.

 

He negotiated the release of hostages in Syria, Cuba, and Iraq. He stood with anti‑apartheid leaders when doing so was politically inconvenient. He spoke in Paris, London, Johannesburg, and countless cities where people recognized in him a moral authority that transcended nationality.

 

In 2021, France awarded him the Légion d’honneur, acknowledging a lifetime spent confronting racism and injustice wherever they appeared. Even as illness tightened its grip, first Parkinson’s disease, then progressive supranuclear palsy, Jackson refused to retreat from public life.

 

He kept showing up: at rallies, at churches, at union halls, at vigils. His body weakened, but his conviction never did. His family described him as a “servant leader,” and that is perhaps the most accurate portrait of the man. He served not for applause but because he believed deeply in the humanity of those who had been denied it.

 

Jesse Jackson’s legacy is not a closed chapter. It is a living inheritance. He taught that justice is not a moment but a movement, not a slogan but a lifelong discipline. He reminded the world that the fight for the emancipation of the Black man is inseparable from the fight for the emancipation of all people.

 

 He showed, through decades of unbroken commitment, that hope is not naïve; it is necessary. His passing on Tuesday, February 17, leaves a void, but it also leaves a map. 

The road he walked is still before us, and the drumbeat he kept, steady, insistent, unafraid, continues to echo. Jesse Jackson did not simply witness history. He bent it toward justice.

 

Why I refuse to trust Google’s error messages

 

My biggest nightmare is trusting Google.

I no longer trust Google when it sends messages instructing me to “fix” errors on my blog. The reason is simple: this is the same company that destroyed our first blog and has repeatedly manipulated the second one, reducing its visibility and interfering with its indexing.

 

When a platform has a history of altering URLs, redirecting pages, and suppressing content, it loses the moral authority to present itself as a helpful guide. So when Google suddenly claims, “This is the new reason your articles are not being indexed,” I cannot accept that at face value.

 

I know from experience that many of these so-called “errors” were created by Google itself. For that reason, any message from Google telling me to “fix” something will always be treated as deceptive. 

A company that has deliberately interfered with my work cannot expect me to believe that its warnings are genuine or its intentions are honest.

 

I have seen how they manipulate my URLs, how they reduce my visibility, and how they create problems only to pretend they are helping me solve them. My trust is not blind, and it is certainly not for sale.

 

In every man’s chest, there is a heart, and even the strongest heart has a limit to what it can endure. Mine has reached that limit with Google.

 

At this moment, I have no trust left in the company, and I doubt that trust will ever return in my lifetime. The burden is no longer on me to believe them; it is on them to prove me wrong.