Criminal Law of French Origin and Criminal Behavior of African Occult Origin: The Modernity of Witchcraft Trials in the West of the Republic of the Ivory Coast

While doing fieldwork with the Wê, an ethnic group living in the western region of the Republic of the Ivory Coast, I had the opportunity to observe a witchcraft trial in one of their villages, in May 1999. Confronted with the persisting power of the belief in witchcraft, I tended first to consider such trials as linked to rural life. This position became untenable, however, when continuing my empirical research in 2000 in an urban setting, namely, at the correctional tribunal of Man, the main town in western Ivory Coast, as witches stood trial at several audiences that I attended. As the Republic of the Ivory Coast, a former French colony, applies laws that are largely inspired by, not to say a copy of, French legislation, I tried to find out to what extent criminal law of French origin could adequately be applied to witchcraft, that is, criminal behavior from an African point of view.

I also intend to illustrate in this text the modernity of the African belief in witchcraft, based on my research in the west of the Ivory Coast. It became obvious that (belief in) witchcraft still has a prominent place in the life and behavior of many Ivorians living in rural and urban environments, notwithstanding their age, sex, education, job, social status, or religion. Given that many Africans live in France (and other Western states), the French criminal justice system, as well as the health and welfare systems, may be confronted with behavior that Africans link to witchcraft. Some knowledge of former and contemporary indigenous ideas concerning the reaction toward and punishment of witchcraft, as well as the attitude of postcolonial African criminal justice systems in this matter, may help to evaluate this behavior from a less ethnocentric point of view, which, in accordance with Western opinion, links witchcraft merely to superstition, fairy tales, and mental disorders.

In Great Britain, for instance, a case was reported in January 2001, in which an African child was abused and finally killed by her relatives, because they claimed that she was a witch. The murderers were sentenced to life because, according to the newspaper article, "they were not insane."¹ A recent case in Liège (Belgium) concerns an African man who stabbed his wife several times with a fork: "She killed him two days ago through witchcraft. All that was left of him was an empty envelope. He had to kill her in order to become normal again."² The newspaper article indicates that the wife had contacted the police several times because of the witchcraft accusations of her husband but that she did not get any response.

The purpose of this contribution is neither to evaluate how witchcraft accusations in France (and other Western countries) are influenced by the structural situation³ of African immigrants in their new country nor to study the question of cultural defense⁴ in criminal cases.⁵ When it comes to criminal law, ius loci, in other words, the French criminal code has to be applied and is applied in practice for (African) immigrants. They are considered knowing the French legislation as nemo censitur ignorare legem (no one should ignore the law). The question of whether French tribunals and courts are willing to take into account African belief in witchcraft as a mitigating circumstance according to French criminal law cannot be answered in this text because of lack of information on that issue. My intention is merely to demonstrate that reference to witchcraft cannot be considered outdated by Western criminal justice systems, as it still occupies a prominent place in postcolonial Africa.

My choice of discussing this theme has been inspired neither by exoticism nor by any intention to demonstrate the inferiority or cruelty of African legal systems. I present, without any judgment of value from a Western point of view, African ideas as they were expressed from an African point of view during my fieldwork.

After a brief presentation of my research in the Republic of the...