“Most considered those who profited at the expense of others to be what Balanta called befera . . . translated as ‘witches’ or ‘cannibals’ - people who consumed others’ health, souls, or bodies and undermined community coherence. Kidnappers who seized kin or neighbors in the night and sold them fell into this category, as did European and Eurafrican (mixed race) slavers and their middleman agents.” - Walter Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600-1830
To understand the Balanta view of colorless (white) people and “Christians” one must first see the world through Balanta ontology and the 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors. Only then will the following passage from Hawthorne’s book make sense:
“Across the [Guinea Bissau] coast, loyalty to and selfless hard work for family and community were virtues, deserving of praise. However, disloyalty, disobedience, and greed were ‘sins’ deserving of punishment. . . . .
Perhaps the most serious of transgressions in coastal areas was witchcraft. What witchcraft was and how it was dealt with in the Guinea-Bissau area was detailed by Philip Beaver, who launched a failed attempt to establish an English colony on the island of Bolama in the later eighteenth century. In his diary, he expressed shock at the degree to which people in the area believed in ‘witches,’ or people who attained unnatural wealth or fortune by entering into a contract with a spirit. The spirit aided the supplicant but demanded human souls in return. One evening, Beaver said, two or three of the colony’s African workers, who were known as grumetes (literally, ‘cabinboy’ but on the coast the word was applied to blacks laboring in any capacity for an employer), visited him to report that one of their colleagues named Francisco ‘was not a good man.’ Francisco, they said, ‘wanted to eat one of them (John Basse) who had been very ill.’
By ‘eating,’ the grumetes meant consuming the health, soul, or body of another, which resulted in the victim becoming sick, dying, or disappearing. The term has been used for centuries to describe witches’ actions; witches were thought to sacrifice others clandestinely at night, consuming them as part of their spirit contract. Some witches had the power to shift shapes, assuming the form of an animal and then devouring their prey. When people disappeared in the night - the victims of kidnappers who enslaved and sold them - they had been, in the coastal conception of things, ‘eaten’ by witches. That is, they had been consumed by someone who benefited from their demise..
For Europeans like Beaver, the notion of witches consuming others was ridiculous. Beaver, indeed, was struck by what he saw as the improbability of a man ‘eating’ another, so he sought explanation from a grumete. named Johnson, who was fluent in English. Johnson ‘said that the man accused of eating the other was a witch, and that he was the cause of John Basse’s illness, by sucking his blood with his infernal witchcraft.’ Although Beaver insisted, ‘that there is no such thing as a witch,’ Johnson had do doubt that there was, saying that Francisco ‘is well known to be a witch; that he has killed many people with his infernal art, and that this is the cause of his leaving his own country.’ Should he return to his people, Johnson said, Francisco ‘would be sold as a slave.’ Johnson also told Beaver of another witch among the grumetes named Corasmo. He ‘could turn himself into an alligator’ and ‘had killed many people by his witchcraft.’ Corasmo had also fled his country so as to avoid being sold to Atlantic merchants. Witchcraft, Johnson insisted again to Beaver, ‘was never forgiven, and its professors never suffered to remain in their own country when once found out’ because ‘they would either be killed or sold.’
Johnson’s statement is strikingly similar to others recorded on the Upper Guinea coast over a period of several hundred years. . . .Although there were (and are) differences in how various coastal societies viewed witches, Beaver’s account makes clear, as do many studies, that in the Guinea Bissau area, selfish and self-serving behavior was evidence of witchcraft. Witches gained fortune and elevated themselves above their peers by harming those around them, and in societies that sought to equalize the distribution of wealth and power within gender and age groupings, this was unacceptable and dangerous. People of the Cacheu River region of Guinea Bissau, Eve Crowley writes, believe that witches focus ‘excessively on personal achievement and advancement even at the expense of others.’ Witches, then, defy sanctions against ‘immoderate greed,’ becoming ‘ruthless and dangerous and willing to sacrifice the lives of their kinspeople.’ Similarly, Eric Gable argues in a study of the Manjaco of the same region, ‘Excessive prosperity is evidence of a heinous crime’ - a pact with a spirit that could only be forged at the expense of others in the community. In small-scale, egalitarian communities, he argues, ‘wealth is evil,’ and the rich are thought to be ‘morally reprehensible’ witches.
Consider now this passage from ‘From “People’s Struggle” to “This War of Today”: Entanglements of Peace and Conflict in Guinea-Bissau’. Africa 78 (2): 245-263. by Marina Temudao
“THE SPIRIT OF POLITICS In Guinea-Bissau, cosmology is a key element in the understanding of most political and social events. No matter how strongly influenced by Islam or Christianity, most people subscribe to a ‘basic cosmology’, to use Robin Horton’s apt concept (Horton 1975); they conceive of the territory as inhabited by spiritual entities known in Kriol as iran. Through contracts with these iran, the heads of the founding lineages of the ethnic group that first settled in a territory obtained the right to be called the ‘owners of the land’ (landlords). There is also a generalized understanding that every rich or famous person, every scientist and every powerful country, has one or several spirits working for them. Through contracts with these iran, mediated by the shrines’ ritual specialists, people may try to solve problems (from health to disputes), to enact revenges or to obtain power and material or symbolic resources (Crowley 1990; Temudo 2005). During the liberation struggle, Amílcar Cabral tried to fight against what he perceived as backwardness (Cabral 1979: 11, 71–107). Yet, incapable of fighting, in the short run, against the ‘cultural reality’ of the people, Cabral took the pragmatic decision to manipulate the religious notions about iran that could cause no harm to the liberation struggle (Cabral 1974: 121, 125 and 1979: 78, 82; see also Chabal 1983: 81); he left for post-colonial times the development of education and of a ‘scientific culture’ (Cabral 1979: 78, 85). By stating that the iran were also ‘nationalists’ and that they wanted the colonialists to leave Guinea, Cabral (1974: 123, 124) managed not only to convince peasants to abandon their compounds and take refuge in sacred forests, but also to gain a deeper legitimacy for the liberation war. Iran were summoned by ritual specialists to protect the land, peasants and soldiers alike. Contracts between combatants and the iran during the liberation war were considered vital in making soldiers invisible, invincible and famous in each battle that they fought. Some of these contracts, however, had to be regularly renewed during a whole lifetime; thus connecting shrine supplicants and landlords. When the liberation war ended, rituals of healing, cleansing and social reconciliation were performed: the land had to be ‘washed’ of the blood that had been spilt; the ‘souls’ of the deceased had to be ‘washed’ so that they could rest in peace together with their ancestors; combatants were ‘washed’ to protect them from the revenge of the ‘souls’ of those they had killed. Rituals were also performed ‘so as to stop the hatred that they [Nalu] had taken to the shrines against those who had adhered to the colonial side and against the Fula who committed many atrocities’ (Infansu, elderly man, 18 March 2007). Besides the Nalu landlords who organized rituals to protect all Cubucaré inhabitants, the other ethnic groups also performed their own rituals of healing and cleansing. Cosmology is also significant both because iran can be considered powerful combatants and because they can protect the territory. During the 1998–9 conflict, the southern region of Tombali – where Cubucaré lies – was ritually protected by Nalu landlords (the land was ‘closed’, as they say) to prevent the conflict from entering. 14 As had happened in the anti-colonial struggle, the spirits were, once again, summoned to participate in a war, not only to protect the Nalu territory, but also against a foreign army that was perceived as threatening national sovereignty. Forged during the liberation struggle and reinforced in the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état, the relationship between the rural population and the ‘Guinean’ (not of Cape Verdean, Luso-African or Lebanese origin) highest ranks of the political and military state apparatus is based not so much on kith and kin or straightforward patron– client relations as on the intermediation of contracts with the iran of each ‘spirit province’ that makes up Guinea-Bissau. The weakness (or even reversal) of patron–client relations is, in my opinion, due to their feeble development during the colonial era 15 and to the empowerment of peasants, during both the liberation struggle and the post-colonial period, through their role in spiritual contracts and in the various practices and performances of the marabus. 16 Peasants are also empowered by their relatively stable livelihood systems in which agriculture provides basic wealth and reciprocity and solidarity supports people in harsh times. Through their social and political systems, through agriculture and local trade networks and through the use of their own health specialists, peasants remain, for most of their basic needs, relatively independent of the state (see also Drift 2000: 43; Forrest 2003: 205–27). The weakness of patron–client relations is also a major factor in the waning of strategies of ‘political tribalism’, even if they were attempted by the political elite. Cubucaré peasants can be considered to be more patrons than clients in their relations with the heroes of the liberation war, who continue to constitute an influential part of the political, military and economic elite. In return for some casual material benefits, they offer highly valued spiritual services reversing the patron–client model of urban–rural power relations 17 and the ‘classic’ vision of state–society ‘vertical topographies of power’. 18 Common people usually accept all gifts on offer from the political parties, and then vote for the party or the candidate of their choice – ‘politics is trade’ as youngsters usually say – but this should not be confused with patron–client relations. Furthermore, although peasants (mainly those who contributed to the liberation war) have unfulfilled expectations and claims towards the state and even a certain sense of betrayal, there is no need, as in colonial times, for the hardening of patron–client relations. The most paradigmatic example of this reversed clientelistic relationship between the urban elite and peasants is that of Nino Vieira. His unprecedented courage and ‘invincibility’ as a commander during the liberation struggle 19 are popularly explained by the multiple contracts he had made with all the powerful iran of Guinea-Bissau and the protection granted by the most prestigious marabus. After the 1980 coup, ‘traditional’ ceremonies became public events (see, for example, Fernandes 1993: 46; Gable 2003: 98, 99) and rumour had it that Vieira had established contracts with all the powerful iran of the country in order to secure the presidency for life. Nonetheless, according to some of my Cubucaré interviewees, his imprisonment at the end of the 1998–9 war had been made possible because women – aggrieved by the invasion of their country by foreign troops called in by him and wanting to restore peace – had retrieved, using invisible means, the charm (guarda) they had given to Vieira in the days of the liberation struggle. Silva notes that in the political campaigns after the war the urban elite increased the open use of ‘traditional ceremonies’ (Silva 2000: 114). Even such western-educated politicians as the well-known Dr Helder Vaz, then leader of the RGB-MB party, based his 2004 electoral campaign on contracts with the iran. 20 Again, Nino Vieira offers the best example. Before the beginning of the presidential electoral campaign, one of the most important marabus of Cubucaré (the eldest son of Vieira’s main marabu during the liberation war) was called by Vieira to work for him in the neighbouring Republic of Guinea so that he could return to the country and win the presidential elections. Vieira is also said to have reinforced his contracts with most Guinea- Bissau iran during the electoral campaign. Nonetheless, Nalu elders refused to take him to their shrines on account of his responsibility in the 1998–9 civil war. In Guinea-Bissau, politics and cosmology are connected in inextricable ways and should not be conceived as two separate fields of action.”
Balanta, a group with whom I have spent many years, believe that to become wealthy and powerful requires striking a deal with a spirit. Such contracts are forged with the sacrifice of human lives, which is the price that spirits demand. For this, when people fall ill or die it is widely suspected that someone in a community must have acted nefariously. . . . An elder Baga put this in clear terms in an interview. ‘This is an egalitarian society,’ he said. ‘We all keep our heads at the same level; if someone wants to raise their head above the rest of us, they will have it chopped off.’
The frequency of raiding after the mid-eighteenth century offered some people increased access to wealth and introduced the possibility of widening social differentiation within egalitarian communities. Of Esulalu, Baum notes that slave raiders and their extended families managed to acquire more cattle and rice fields and took control of important religious shrines. However, because cattle holdings could be wiped out from disease, a rich man could quickly become poor. Further, slavers did not control all shrines, so they were forced to share some of their fortune with other shrine keepers. Similarly, those who reaped gains from slaving ‘had to be careful how they displayed their wealth or how they wielded power, let they be accused of using nefarious means to achieve their preeminence.’ Esulalu were, then able to limit the influence of those who realized gains from slave raiding and trading and to ‘preserve a structure of diffuse power.’ Here, as elsewhere on the coast, witchcraft trials served to maintain the status quo - to prevent some from rising too far above others. . . . Most communities remained free from rule by state’s elite. . . . Witchcraft and witchcraft trials were a means of perpetuating political and economic decentralization. Witchcraft accusations reflected tensions in society, but they did not necessarily intensify class distinctions. In Guinea Bissau, such accusations eradicated these distinctions. Witchcraft trials were the means through which common folk resisted the emergence of a political elite. . . .Those who failed to make connections within their communities - to foster friendships by acting generously rather than selfishly - were necessarily witches. No one came to their aid. Following a trial, community members, Alvares continued, ‘attack the household of the forsaken wretch and confiscate all his goods.’ In this way, wealth that should have been the community’s was distributed to the population at the moment of a witch’s elimination.
Although direct evidence is lacking, we might speculate that as the number of ships arriving in Bissau and Cacheu increased and as coastal groups stepped up the production of slaves to garner imports after 1750, the frequency of witchcraft accusations and trials increased as well. . . . Those who got too close to Europeans or, more likely, Eurafricans, who lived on the coast and served as intermediaries in trade relations, risked disrupting group cohesion by shirking their responsibilities in fields and by elevating themselves above their peers as they accumulated excessive wealth.
Thos who engaged too much with Europeans and Eurafricans risked becoming like them - risked becoming witches. And this is precisely how coastal people viewed whites and those associated with them - as witches. Beaver noted this when he wrote that ‘all white man witch’ is an article of general belief among these people.’ A few years earlier in Sierra Leone, John Matthews wrote something similar; Africans thought ‘the white man’ carried out the actions of witches with each slave he purchased, using the slave as ‘a sacrifice to his God, or to devour him as food.’ On the Upper Guinea coast from as early as the sixteenth century and through to today, many Africans called Christians (or people who professed Christian - or European-based identities) ‘white’ . . . .Given this, ‘white man’ - as in ‘all white man witch’ - likely applied to a broad spectrum of people associated with Atlantic commerce and Christianity, be they light skinned or not.
Whatever the case, it was clear to all that ‘whites’ often took possession of humans and robbed them of their strength by chaining them, marching them to ports, underfeeding them, and holding them in filthy barracoons where they awaited embarkation on ships. Moreover, ‘whites’ were motivated by selfishness and greed. They controlled great wealth, they sought ever more riches, and excessive personal affluence was evil. Europeans and Eurafricans turned people into profit - slaves into tobacco, alcohol, cloth, and other things - which was witchcraft par excellence.
Slaving and witchcraft, then, went hand in hand. . . . In the case of the Balanta, men who left their communities to meet with foreign merchants could be given the penalty of death. “
This passage from Hawthorne helps explain this further passage discussing the Balanta ancient ancestors from Credo Mutwa’s book, Indaba, My Children,
“The Ba-Ntu, or the Ba-Tu, were the founders of our culture and our religion. And being a solid, uniform nation they were at peace for thousands of years. They were not ruled by chiefs, but by a High Council of the Mothers of the People – that is, all the Witches and Sybils over the age of forty. At this time the Strange Ones, the Phoenicians, or Ma-Iti, who came some five to six hundred BC, and the slave-raiding Arabs were things of the distant future.
The Ba-Tu were at peace among themselves and because a High Curse was laid upon any person who stole as much as a single grain of corn from his neighbor, crime was totally unknown. There were warriors-elect who stationed themselves along trading routes at regular intervals, to protect travelers and traders against attack, not by human beings, but by wild animals. Man, in Africa at least, had not yet thought of offending a fellow man, physically or otherwise.
The ruling Council of the Mothers of the People used magic and naked intimidation to exercise control over all the people. These people had no fear of death; they knew it as something inevitable which had to come sooner or later, and capital punishment had no meaning whatsoever. The Mothers of the People also knew that corporal punishment infuriates, challenges and hardens the average criminally inclined human being and encourages him to become more cunning. Thus, they kept war and crime away from their land with the one medium that impresses the average human being – witchcraft.
Tribal historians today still sigh for those days when there was only one race of man and the Spirit of Peace walked the land – when every man woman and child, yea, every beast felt the soothing protection of the soft-eyed, infinitely wise Mothers of the People.
This was the first and last instance in the whole record of the Black People of Africa when pure witchcraft and black magic were used, not to terrorize people, but to keep peace in the land. For hundreds of years peace reigned in the land of the Ba-Ntu and in this atmosphere of peace the Great Belief was born. When eventually this nation broke up into the various tribes the Great Belief had taken such a strong hold on the souls and minds of people that they were completely lost without it.”
