The Witches of Gambaga
2012; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1555-2462
Autores Tópico(s)African studies and sociopolitical issues
ResumoYaba Badoe. The Witches of Gambaga. 2010. Ghana/U.K. English and local languages, with English subtitles. 55 minutes. The Collective Eye. $250.00. This film, which won a second prize in the documentary category at FESPACO 2011, explores the tribulations and, quite literally, the trials of women who, scapegoated and stigmatized as witches, even by family members, are exiled to a camp in Gambaga, Northern Ghana. According to lore, the camp was established in the nineteenth century as a sanctuary for a suspected witch rescued from imminent execution by a kindly imam. The film opens with the ordeals of Amina Wumbala, a widow, whose brother died in his sleep following an altercation. Declared a witch by the community, she was severely beaten, forced across a river, left for dead at its banks, and eventually found her way to Gambaga. Other residents have lived in the camp for varying periods of time and as a result of various circumstances, including Magazia Hawa, a once famous praise-singer, for more than twenty-five years; Alima and Zenabo, twenty years; and Agruba, ten years. Salmata, condemned with her daughter, had contemplated suicide, whereas Zenabo 's mother, also accused of witchcraft, had followed her daughter to the camp to help rear her grandchildren. On the basis of someone's dream, Azara Azindow, a once-prosperous businesswoman, had been convicted of causing a meningitis outbreak. Salmata was exiled after the death of the daughter of her rival, a co-wife in a polygamous marriage. Under the guardianship of the local chief, the Gambarrana, who adjudicates issues of guilt and innocence, residency and repatriation, obligations and liberties, these women are lodged in a liminal zone between sanctuary and incarceration, humanity and abjection. They are obliged to work on the chiefs farm and are subjected to trials, redolent of inquisitorial proceedings, in which a chicken's throat is slit and the vagaries of its death throes exculpate or condemn the accused. If the chicken dies with its wings upturned, the accused is exonerated and drinks a potion with a promise to refrain from evil. Coerced confessions, like Asana's, who was turned in by a brother, are common and reminiscent of a national scandal in 2010, when a seventy-two-year-old grandmother, Ama Hemmah, was tortured into a confession and burnt to death by a gang that included three women and an evangelical pastor. In the film, the aphorisms Fear women, which appears on a tro-tro (public transport), and Stronggest man (sic), a hypermasculinist fantasy that is written on another, convey the degree to which popular culture is permeated with gender politics. In response, Gladys Lariba and Simon Ngota, members of the local Presbyterian Church, whose Go-Home project (Gambaga Outcast Home) is geared toward public education, repatriation, and rehabilitation of the accused, are joined by academics and activists like Rose Entsua-Mensah, Dodzi Tsikata, Takyiwaah Manu, and Yao Graham, who are determined to undermine the pernicious beliefs, attitudes, and values undergirding this practice. …
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