Of Africa and Witchcraft Mentality

"Witchcraft mentality ... account[s] for misfortune, or anything inimical to a person's well-being, as traceable to the activities of witches. [A]ll causality is deemed to have originated primarily from the spiritual realm; the material causes are considered secondary.... This then creates a mindset that attempts to account for misfortune not in the actions, behaviour or attitude of the victim, but rather in the activities of an enemy or malefactor. ... [T]his mindset, which is becoming more popular with the advent of neo-Pentecostal and charismatic theology, [personalizes] events and occurrences in everyday life.
          ... The consequence of such a mentality is that it absolves people from taking responsibilities for their own actions. The usual explanation is that the victim has done the right things, but that a witch has intervened to turn a well-calculated and well-intended act into something dangerous, negative and harmful. Today, this idea has been incorporated into much of charismatic theology, which teaches that it is the right of a born-again person to have access and prosperity and, therefore, failure and lack of success must be the work of demons or witches. In the final analysis, the witchcraft mentality ... provide[s] a very simplistic scheme for the interpretation of life, where the good things that happen to someone are deemed to have escaped the attention of witches, while the bad things can be traced to their activities."

Abraham Akrong, 2007, 59-61

"A Phenomenology of Witchcraft in Ghana," in 

Imagining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa, ed. Gerrie ter Haar