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Witch Hunt

When crops fail or children die of mysterious illnesses, the villages of northern Ghana usually suspect that a witch is to blame. The association is most likely to come from within a family - the same feeling that binds a village together in adversity can be turned ruthlessly against a scapegoat, and it takes little more than suspicion for a witch to face death at the hands of a lynch mob. Fearing for their lives, hundreds of elderly women in northern Ghana have banded together for protection in sanctuaries known as "witch camps." They live in clusters of sun-baked huts.
Sanatu Iddrisu fled her village after she was accused of cursing a teenage boy whose death was likely to have been caused by malaria. "It was my nephew who accused me," said Sanatu. "He threatened to burn my house down. I came here for my own safety.
There is no other community that would accept me because of the stigma of witchcraft."The women are not completely shunned by their families - children and grandchildren come to visit - but their relatives have shed the financial burden of caring for them. Instead, the women have meagre existence, gathering firewood to sell and tending tiny plots of maize and spinach. The Charity Action Aid, which has researched the phenomenon, estimates that there are almost 400 accused witches in six camps in northern Ghana. Women have even fled from neighbouring Burkina Faso and Togo to find sanctuary.
Economic motives fuel claims of witchcraft. Sanatu's neighbour in the camp, a woman named Shetu Bukari, refused to move out of her husband's house and go back to her own family when she was widowed. However, she had to give up the valuable property and run away to a camp when her brother-in-law accused her of casting a spell on his pregnant wife.

Jeevan Vasagar, The guardian, Dec. 6, 2005.