In a custom in Ghana’s Volta Region, girls and young women are sent into the service of traditional (also called “fetish”) priests to atone for a wrong committed in the family—sometimes generations ago. The women are called Trokosi, or “wives of the gods.” In fact, tro means “deity,” and kosi means “slave,” a much more accurate representative than “wife.” The priest is the intermediary between the physical and spirit worlds. In return for the indentured servitude of these women, he is supposed to protect the family from catastrophe inflicted either by the ancestors, the gods, or an erstwhile curse.
The Trokosi custom is one example of the intersection of the tangible and supernatural in Ghana, where, unlike the West, these realms are not necessarily thought of as disconnected. If a hospital-dispensed medication is not working for someone who is physically ill, he or she may go to a traditional priest for a consultation and/or indigenous herbal treatment. The importance of curses, the ancestors, and the gods in African daily life cannot be overstated. The words juju, voodoo, and witchcraft are among those that describe how things occur in the physical world as a result of the supernatural.
In 1945, a 10-year-old girl in the Ghanaian town of Elmina, was found dead on the beach after a ritual killing. Called the Bridge House murder for the location at which it occurred, it demonstrated the gruesome hallmarks of a ritual murder, i.e. the removal of body parts such as the eyes, lips, or genitalia. In this case, the aim of the ritual murder was to “make medicine” that would help win a court case in a bitterly-fought chieftaincy dispute. Because the perpetrators of this horrific act were so brazen and cavalier about it, they were arrested within relatively short order and ultimately hanged to death. During the trial, British colonial investigators concentrated on the murder itself and little, if at all, on the “juju” aspect. However, there is no doubt that beliefs in the spirit world were involved. To this day in Ghana, ritual killings still do occur as they do elsewhere in Africa.
Ghanaian investigative reporter Anas Aremeyaw Anas brought to light the little-known practice in northern Ghana of “spirit killings,” the murder of physically deformed children believed to be evil spirits. The exposure led to the banning of the practice by local chiefs. Westerners find it difficult to understand the interpretation of the physical world through the lens of the spiritual, or vice versa. How could a physical child be a “spirit?” Likewise, a witch is believed to have the ability to exert physical effects from an ethereal realm. They fly away from the physical body at night to join a coven of other witches, sometimes to eat a human victim. Hence a barren woman might be accused of being a witch who repeatedly consumes the baby trying to grow in her womb. But that isn’t literal. It occurs spiritually, and there again lies the difficulty of resolving how the spiritual can occur in the physical world.
In the practice of sakawa in Ghana, supernatural abilities are granted to Internet swindlers via the powers of a fetish priest who makes the scammers perform certain bizarre tasks, such as obtaining body parts or fluids, especially sexually related, or having multiple episodes of sexual intercourse a day. “Sakawa boys” relate how these exercises and interactions with fetish priests radically increase their scamming skills, but also make their victim (called a mugu) more susceptible to being duped. For example, a fetish priest I met in Ghana showed me a chicken skull with a beak tied shut with string. After being buried in a cemetery, such an amulet will prevent the mugu from resisting the scammer’s demands, i.e. a tied beak can’t squawk and dead men don’t talk.
The same fetish priest described how he could have someone killed. To the priest’s great amusement, I thought he meant putting out a contract job on the would-be victim. No, he said, death by spiritual means. An arguably ridiculous example of spiritual power is as follows: a famous Ghanaian traditional priest called Kwaku Bonsam claims to have concocted a special potion from the gods to inflict a knee injury on soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo before the 2014 World Cup match between Ghana and Portugal. Not much of a boast, since Ronaldo still scored and Portugal still won, but the general idea was there. Perhaps the gods failed Bonsam in this case.
While supernatural phenomena in Ghana’s daily life serve as a unique background for much of the crime fiction I set in that West African country, it can also be a challenge. For logistic reasons too complex to go into now, my novels are not distributed to a significant degree in Africa in general and Ghana in particular. Western readers, primarily those in the United States, are and will remain my main market for the foreseeable future. So how do I introduce these unfamiliar beliefs and concepts like juju to my readers? Very carefully. It should appear seamless, which is not as simple as it may sound. Whenever I describe or highlight a supernatural phenomenon in my novel, I follow some general rules.
- It should play an important part in the plot and not be tangential to the story.
- I avoid making it seem gratuitous.
- I avoid making it seem didactic.
- I leave criticisms or praise of the custom to characters in the novel, not the narrator.
Police against crime: the reality
In real-world Ghana, crimes based in spiritual beliefs, murder included, may occur in secret or in remote locations in the country, e.g. rural areas with poor or difficult road access. What that means in practice is that they may exist under the radar of the almost universally under-resourced Ghana Police Service (GPS). In his paper, Appiahene-Gyamfi writes, “. . . some of the difficulties and shortcomings facing the GPS include the inability to cover all parts of Ghana, particularly the remotest countryside; inadequate and obsolete equipment[s] and accoutrements; poor data collection and record keeping; slow and sloppy investigations; and political influence.” Ironically, this reality is fodder for murder mysteries because it is a compelling background for a police detective or private investigator fighting for justice in a hamstrung, corrupt system that is, to boot, tangled up with spiritual beliefs.
Themes in West African fiction
In an article called Post-Colonial Crime Fiction, Lindsey Green-Sims discusses West African crime fiction by citing seven different novels set in Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Liberia. One of them,Tail Of The Bluebird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes, a murder mystery set in a contemporary Ghanaian village, blends CSI with magical realism. It might be described as an attempt to insert forensic science into the middle of a heavily traditional Ghanaian village where men and women “commune with the spirits of their ancestors.” This conflict between the modern and traditional is tailor made for fiction but reality-rooted.
In her article African Crime Fiction: The world as it is, or the world as we would like it to be? Karen Ferreira-Meyers, who notes the relative recency of the African crime novel, writes: “While the reader often chooses a crime novel for its entertainment value, these novels [by African authors] also communicate specialized knowledge, condensed and standardized from several of the many spheres of human activity that can sometimes come across as ‘exotic’ to Western readers.” For example, Achille Ngoye combines the usual depictions of crime with less familiar accounts of human sacrifice and witchcraft rituals in his novel Sorcellierie à bout portant (“witchcraft at close range”). Ferreira-Meyers also draws attention to the reflections of Abasse Ndione, who states, “occultism plays an essential role” not only during the course of the investigation, but also in solving the mystery, as is the case in his novel La vie en spirale.
The introduction of magic, juju, and the supernatural has a special place in crime fiction because it doesn’t fit with the otherwise precise and logical evolution of a murder mystery. As author Fanny Brasleret says, “The strong presence of the irrational in a genre that sings the praises of reason upsets the system of the crime novel.” Think of the denouement in a murder where the detective reveals who committed the act, how, and why. Including the supernatural in what is often a very physical and logical solution to the crime could be tricky and may render the author guilty of an improbable ending of the novel—at least in the eyes of his or her readers. Somehow, it must work in a believable fashion. That makes the writing not so much harder as it does more complex.
Brutality and “readability”—where to draw the line
One of the prerequisites of a ritual murder is that the victim be alive during the removal of his or her organs. The Screaming Of The Innocent by Unity Dow has a disturbing and graphic description of just such a murder of a 12-year-old girl in Botswana. The screaming of the victim is said to make the harvested flesh more potent when it is ultimately made into a medicine. The parts removed are often functionally related to the intended effect of the killing, for example, the Adam’s apple (the laryngeal prominence) to silence an opposing witness in court, or the breasts as a source of good “mother luck” that will bring good fortune as a potion. In my novels, I have used far milder descriptions of traditional “juju” ceremonies, but never a ritual murder. Although it is possible I might recount the aftermath of such a crime, a detailed account of the act itself is unlikely to appear in my stories, particularly if a child is involved. Every author has a “don’t-go-there” limit, and that is one of mine. Nevertheless, ritual murder as a phenomenon is a topic that needs to be faced if it is ever to be defeated. Crime fiction may never make it go away, but it’s a step in the right direction.
In summary, crime fiction out of Africa, a relatively new phenomenon, may contribute a new aspect to the genre, i.e. the part spiritual or mystical beliefs can play in crime, more specifically murder. Perhaps it’s time to add a new sub-genre category: African.
