Lacerations and Rumors: Witch-hunting and the Ideological Legacy of the Socialist Revolution in Mozambique [Muidumbe, 2002-2003]

• Published in: Cahiers d'études africaines 2008-01 (189-190), p.209-236
• Main Author: Israel, Paolo
• Format: Article
• Language: fre
• Subjects: Africa; Colonialism; Districts; Mozambique; Neoliberalism; Revolutions; Rumors; Rural Areas; Secret Societies; Skin; Social Order; Socialism; Villages; Youth
• ISSN: 0008-0055
• DOI: 10.4000/etudesafricaines.10472

In 2002-2003, a crisis connected to accusations of sorcery took place in Muidumbe, a rural district of Northern Mozambique, being the cradle of the Struggle for Liberation. As lions attacked and devoured people in teh zones of agricultural production, the news of the killings unleashed deadly witch-hunts in the "communal villages" of the district. The violence was fueled by rumors concerning the existence of a secret society (similar to those acting elsewhere in Africa in the colonial era) whose members disguised themselves with lion skins and paws, and killed in order to obtain and sell organs. The crisis culminated with a political uprising, in which the young people defied the social order through witch-killings and symbolic inversions. This crisis can be connected to broader social phenomena, such as global rumors concerning zombies, vampires and the traffic of organs, the emergence of new local paradigms of sorcery, the "syndrome of emasculation" of African youth in the neo-liberal context. In this paper, I read this crisis as pointing to the local articulation of the revolutionary project of nation building in Mozambique, to the historical process of subjectivation of its pioneers, and specifically to the embodiment of double-binding ideologies. Adapted from the source document.