Child Witches of Kinshasa: Modernity and Anxiety

The streets of Kinshasa are called home by thousands of children inhabiting the city. Structural poverty and violence as a result of Belgian colonialism and the Mobutuist Congolese State has rendered almost half the population... [ view full abstract ]

The streets of Kinshasa are called home by thousands of children inhabiting the city. Structural poverty and violence as a result of Belgian colonialism and the Mobutuist Congolese State has rendered almost half the population unemployed and with nowhere to turn. Children, a once peripheral community, have been forced onto the foreground of society as they gain control over income without the family supervision that their parents expect. The older generation, threatened by these children’s newfound agency in a globalizing world, expresses their anxiety through the idiom of witchcraft; children are believed to harbor evil spirits that paralyze their families’ material and personal prosperity.

With a changing economy, an unstable and informal government, and the rise of evangelical Christianity, the manner in which witchcraft in the Congo is discussed and perceived has transformed into an epidemic that leaves many children homeless and stigmatized as witches. Once on the streets, these children embrace the reorganization of their society and create artificial kin groups that empower their sense of identity, but threaten their physical wellbeing. In this presentation I evaluate how modernity has changed Kinois culture, and how modern urban Africans interpret and alleviate negative allegations of conventional witchcraft.