Black magic women
Tales of black magic from around the country spark fear and curiosity
WHEN I posed a few questions in September’s column on “black magic”, I didn’t anticipate the cyclone-like response that made landfall soon afterwards. I had asked:
Were you affected by black magic? How does black magic work? Does it really work? Is it dangerous? Can it destroy a person’s life? How prevalent is it? How much does it cost? Can you really “send it back”? What proof do you have that the “specialists” aren’t charlatans?
As I waded through the e-mails from all over South Africa, I wondered about the mental health of some of the writers. But then it became clear that the stories were chillingly similar to one another. They kept me up at night, both from shock and a need to find an explanation. Here are a few examples:
“These demonic forces terrorised me and my family — shadows and dark shapes would walk around our home at night and live a life, just as we did during the day. It was like having two families live in one house in shifts. Except, the family who lived here at night were all children of the devil”;
“Then, this Thing would sit on my son’s chest and he couldn’t breathe. It would make my son scratch his own face and tear all the clothes off his body. It was like watching a horror movie and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it”;
“As soon as I sat on the couch, it felt as if the couch was full of needles. It was only then that my friend told me they had been suffering with evil spirits who didn’t want to leave them alone. I felt it myself. Otherwise, I would never have believed it. I left as soon as I could and have never returned”; and
“These huge burn marks appeared on my daughter’s body — those marks were not there the night before. She and I slept together in a locked bedroom. It felt like I was in the middle of an episode of CSI.”
And, just like watching an episode of CSI, I felt I had possible explanations. Perhaps in the last example, the daughter was actually a victim of child abuse or some unknown medical issue? Maybe the writer had a serious mental health condition, despite the literate e-mail.
After weeks of trying to find answers, I’ve wearily concluded that I was naive in thinking I could tackle this issue and expect nice neat solutions within a month.
When I telephoned the victims, I realised I had opened Pandora’s box. I was told that black magic was a devastatingly evil force that had life-changing consequences for people of all colours and religious backgrounds.
However, the one colour black magic does understand, is the colour of money.
The amounts people mentioned made my head spin. Financial ruin is the name of the game because, if you want to shake off black magic, best you have tons of cash. The figures ranged from a few hundred rands — mostly for prayer goods — to hundreds of thousands. And price was no guarantee of quality, it seemed. Neither is there a money-back guarantee.
“Sandra” said it best in her e-mail: “I got to a point, after years of paying and praying, when I realised that I just had to stop. Nobody had helped me. Nothing had changed. So I had to change. I stopped spending my weekends going from one faith healer to the next. I started reading self-help books and I can tell you now that if you are somebody who is insecure, you will believe that black magic exists. It’s all in the head. If you are weak and gullible, then you deserve to be taken for a ride.”
Yet the queues outside makeshift Wendy houses around South Africa are still long and are made up of people who feel they have no other hope.
I still don’t know what to make of it. I cannot deny the vivid stories people have told me. But it just defies logic.
Life is about ups and downs. We all enjoy the ups, but with the downs we want to blame somebody. And, maybe, that’s when we open up that box . . .
But from what I’ve learnt from you, once you open it, it’s almost impossible to close it.