“Witchdoctors” in White Coats: Politics and Healing Knowledge in Tanzania

ABSTRACT

At the center of conflict between the state and traditional healers (waganga wa kienyeji) over the meanings of traditional healing in contemporary Tanzania are debates about what constitutes knowledge, the production of knowledge, and the legitimacy of “traditional” ways of knowing. Drawing on media analysis and ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2004 and 2016, I describe how healers locate their knowledge in experience, ancestors, and spirits, while the state imagines a future where traditional healers are formally educated and practice in white uniforms. While embedded in a larger colonial and postcolonial history, this conflict arose in response to the attribution of violence against persons with albinism to traditional healers.

Keywords:

• Tanzania
• albinism
• herbalism
• knowledge production
• traditional healing

Acknowledgments

My research has been greatly enhanced through collaboration with my research assistant, Steven Bugumba, and a key informant, Mama Masanja, and the participation of my many research interlocutors. I am grateful to Ira Bashkow, Cindy Hoehler-Fatton, Adria LaViolette, and Peter Metcalf for their readings of an earlier version of this research. This article has also greatly benefited from feedback by the 2015–16 Mercer Faculty Research and Writing Colloquium and Holly Donahue Singh. I am especially grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped me to refine and clarify my arguments. Research was conducted with the approval of the University of Virginia and Mercer University Institutional Review Boards, the Tanzanian Commission on Science and Technology (COSTECH), and the Mwanza Regional government.

Notes

1. While most anthropologists would consider “witchdoctor” to be a pejorative term, it is frequently used by English-speaking Tanzanians as a gloss for waganga wa kienyeji.

2. Scholars such as Bryceson, Jonsson, and Sherrington (2010) and Jane Saffitzoffer much more nuanced analyses of these incidents.

3. All italicized words are Kiswahili.

4. According to Under the Same Sun’s website, the organization “helps people with albinism overcome often deadly discrimination through education and advocacy” (www.underthesamesun.com).

5. All names unless noted are pseudonyms.

6. It is unclear whether any executions have taken place.

7. Ibrahim often wrote in script that was reminiscent of Arabic that included words copied from the Qu’ran, but Arabic readers have confirmed that it was not “real” Arabic.

8. Iliffe (1967) argued that a German cotton scheme instituted in 1902 triggered the Maji Maji rebellion (1905-1907). Rebels were united in their use of “water medicine,” as a form of protection against European weapons.

9. … anything used or intended to be used, or represented to possess the power, by supernatural means, to prevent or delay any person from doing any act which he may lawfully do, or to compel any person to anything, which he may lawfully refrain from doing, or to discover the person guilty of any alleged crime or other act of which complaint is made, or to cause injury to any person or property or to produce natural phenomenon. (The Witchcraft Ordinance of 1928, Chapter 21, reprinted in Mesaki 1993).

10. See the Tanzanian National Archive file 13402/78 and Nichols-Belo (2014) for an example.

11. Efforts to professionalize healers were successful in other nations such as Zimbabwe where ZINATHA has been recognized by the World Health Organization.

12. The incorporation of traditional healing into health systems is a global trend. Scholars at the ITM have advocated for the decolonization of medicine (Mwambo, Mahunnah, and Kayombo 2007) and worked to include traditional healers in research and treatment initiatives. Kayombo and colleagues (2007) have found that while healers regularly treat HIV/AIDS, the historical mistreatment of healers has led some to eschew collaboration with ITM researchers.

13. WHO Global Health Observatory data repository http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.A1444.

14. Chama cha Waganga na Wakunga wa Tiba Asilia Tanzania.

15. Interview was conducted in English; I have left unusual phrasing for accuracy.

16. These killings continue to be reported in the media.

17. Mwanza Neem Clinic closed approximately three years ago, but one of the doctors has opened a similar facility in Kisili Kenya (personal communication).

Additional information

Funding

This research was completed with the support of a US Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship (P022A060047), a University of Virginia Clay Endowment Summer Research Fellowship, and from Mercer University.

Notes on contributors

Amy Nichols-Belo

Amy Nichols-Belo is assistant professor of Global Health Studies and Anthropology at Mercer University.