African
Diaspora
African Diaspora 3 (2010) 77-93
brill.nl/afdi
Circumventing Uncertainty in the Moral Economy:
West African Shrines in Europe, Witchcraft and
Secret Gambling
Jane Parish
Keele University, School of Sociology and Criminology, Keele,
Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK
j.a.e.parish@appsoc.keele.ac.uk
Abstract
This paper examines the moral economy of the African Diaspora through the illicit activities of
secret Ghanaian gamblers in Europe. It follows a Ghanaian, Mr. Baba, a gambler, from North
West England, who looks to the most unlikely of sources of information and certainty in a fast
networked society, the Akan anti-witchcraft shrine located not in Ghana but in the eastern suburbs of Paris, as global bookmaker extraordinaire. In this environment, the anti-witchcraft shrine
rather than being a traditional, obsolete relic of a superstitious past is in its supersonic element.
It is able to transmit ‘hidden’ data, a valuable exchange commodity in an uncertain and insecure
age, about betting odds on an infinite range of topics. At the same time, simultaneously, it protects this commodity from the grasp of witches – immoral, female figures who link fraudulent
facts to the relations that people have with one another.
Keywords
African witchcraft; shrines; Ghanaian diaspora; gambling
Résumé
Cet article examine l’économie morale de la diaspora africaine au travers d’activités illicites de
parieurs ghanéens qui agissent en secret en Europe. Il suit M. Baba, un Ghanéens parieur du
Nord-Ouest de l’Angleterre, qui considère la plus improbable des sources d’informations et de
certitudes : le haut lieu de l’anti-sorcellerie Akan (une sorte de société basée sur de nombreux
réseaux et située non pas au Ghana, mais dans les banlieues-Est de Paris), comme un bookmaker
global sortant de l’ordinaire. Dans cet environnement, le temple de l’anti-sorcellerie, au lieu de
n’être qu’une relique traditionnelle et obsolète d’un passé superstitieux, est plutôt l’expression
d’une certaine modernité. Il est capable de transmettre des données ‘cachées’ concernant les
tendances des paris sur une infinité de sujets : un marché lucratif en ces temps d’incertitudes
et d’insécurité. Dans un même temps, cela permet de protéger ce marché de l’influence des
sorcières – figures féminines immorales qui faussent les relations entre les gens.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010
DOI: 10.1163/187254610X505664
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Mots-clés
sorcellerie Africaine; temples; diaspora Ghanéenne; Paris
Introduction: Witchcraft, Suspicion and Uncertainty
It is commonplace to think of the so-called global network as constituted by
relationships between people. But for Africans living at home and in the
diaspora, globalisation has become a thing-in-itself, determining their fate.
The sense of the infinite possibilities globalisation seems to open up puts pressure on peoples’ relations with one another. This is particularly so for Africans
living away from home whose ongoing transnational connections generate a
sense of paranoia and conflict, a concern that distant others may wish to take
away what diasporans possess, and afflict them with misery and misfortune.
The same suspicions operate in any cosmopolitan African city, whether Accra
or Johannesburg, as it does in London or Paris. In these cities, labour migrants
pose their own claims and counter-claims to accusations and complaints emanating from elsewhere about their financial status, mediated by technologies
of globalisation.
In this climate of unease, among Ghanaian communities at home and
abroad, occult discourses abound. Speculation can be heard on Ghanaian
radio, television and in newspapers about witches, zombies and monsters.
These discourses are then transmitted abroad and connect ‘home’ and ‘host’
communities in an imaginative but coherent moral framework, one which
highlights individuals’ anxiety about inequality, conflict and injustice. To this
end, witchcraft discourses attempt to articulate a suspicion and doubt that
otherwise would be unlikely to be heard – for example, about the consequences
of the opaque and senseless workings of the global economic market (Comaroff & Comaroff 1993, 1999). In Malawi, Englund argues, witchcraft narratives act as a moral critique of the effects of capitalism on the local economy
(Englund 2007:295). In Ghana, witchcraft accusations entail a commentary
about the moral danger of abundant conspicuous consumption (Meyer
1999:32). In Sierra Leone, occult discourses serve to draw attention by the
poor and dispossessed to the illicit accumulation of wealth by African elites,
and their moral impoverishment (Shaw 1997:856). In these circumstances,
the erosion of interpersonal trust among accumulators makes vigilance against
witchcraft advisable. Individuals become caught in the perpetual re-examining
of the meaning of events as they aim to unearth hidden meanings. They live
with a constant sense of fear that a thousand plots remain to be uncovered,
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thus exacerbating the very anxiety and panic that they seek to control. As
Furedi remarks on the culture of fear that he argues dominates contemporary
society, ‘we leave it to the imagination to think the worst’ (1997: 39).
How do such mythologies of suspicion subsume the imagination? The
cyber culture commentator Richard Thieme (2000) uses the notion of the
meme, a ‘contagious, spreading-like viral idea’, to illustrate how information
quickly replicates itself, blurring the distinction between reality and makebelieve to create ‘pseudo-facts’ (Thieme 2000:232). Among West African
transnational migrants, witchcraft acts as a meme – an underground discourse
that is also an ‘open secret’ – something of which everyone is aware, but which
is meant to be hidden. There is therefore a quandary in respect to any discussion about West African witchcraft. A person worried about witchcraft is very
unlikely to reveal this to others lest what he or she says is interpreted as a
covert accusation against an ‘innocent’ third party or, indeed, the unwitting
identification of oneself as a witch. Despite this, occult narratives are so popular today precisely because they are seen as an expression of a spreading anxiety
in an age of dread and insecurity. In this paper, however, rather than offer a
conspiratorial representation of a totalising capitalist system in the sense that
Comaroff and Comaroff (1999) suggest, I argue that occult narratives confront the idea that ‘what we see isn’t all there is’ (Dean 2002:92). In other
words, witchcraft discourses disrupt the idea that there is a ‘knowable reality
that can be mapped’ (Dean 2002:93). Instead, the solutions to the threats and
injustices that life throws up lie in knowing how to deal with unpredictability
and the effects of the unforeseen via talismans, charms, protective and offensive curses, all of which are now traded openly in the global marketplace. Fliers and posters can be found in public spaces advertising voodoo specialists
and witchdoctors. These detail their expertise and remedies to misfortune, and
can be picked up by any passer-by. Their ethnic provenance is mixed, drawn
from a number of sources. This is reflected in the practices of shrine-priests in
transnational multi-cultural communities in Britain, practices which are
incredibly hybrid, combining diverse elements of West African juju and Haitian voodoo.
It is in this diasporic context, marked by a pervasive sense of uncertainty,
unpredictability and contestability, that anti-witchcraft shrines are popular.
They draw connections between people’s descriptions of events and add surprising elements to them. In a world where nothing seems transparent, we
increasingly perceive suspicion and risk in novel ways. During the politics of
the Cold War we knew our ‘enemy’. Fast-forward to the beginning of the
twenty-first century and under the weight of the impenetrable matrix of late
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capitalism, the distinctive identities of ‘nationhood’ and ‘self ’ are disintegrating (Knight 2001). In the crudest terms, there is simply no clear dividing line
between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Knight 2001:27). The simplest and smallest transaction is fraught with apprehension – identity fraud, deadly germs lurking in the
home, paedophiles living in the next street, computer viruses, harmful foods
(Parish 2001b:3). We are constantly reminded of what we don’t know (Dean
2002:88). Combine the scare-mongering of everyday life with the economic
and social insecurity generated by the global economy (and particularly salient
with the disclosure of the banking sub-prime mortgage crisis) and we have
become our own worst enemies. And here is the nub of the matter: in a world
where everything seems contingent and out of our control, amid the randomness of late capitalism, occult narratives appear to offer an expression of comfort and closure in a vast, swirling universe (Parish 2001b:6).
Central to many of these conspiratorial ideas is the notion of concealed
power, and here the West African witch who at first sight would appear to be
an anachronism in modern Europe, thrives in West African communities
‘abroad’. The emphasis is on the figure of the witch, which comes to represent
the modality of corrupt power that lies behind the most public of institutions
and its servants. Much has been written comparing the European witch to her
African counterpart (Austin 1993:97). In the contemporary climate of halfglimpsed truths and rumour, these discourses gloriously come together to
express the interplay between imagination and the effects of the unforeseen.
From tales of Satanic abuse in Britain (La Fontaine 1998) and the USA, to
horrific stories of body-snatching in South America (Scheper-Hughes 2000),
to dial-in-diviners advertising in newspapers and magazines (Comaroff and
Comaroff 1999), occult discourses appear to flourish. Yet, these discourses are
marked by the very doubt that strikes at the heart of multiple networks of
meaning, possibility and information – a delicate equilibrium of transparency
and opacity as we continually search for compelling evidence of the presence
of witchcraft, (Geschiere 1997:23) even if ultimately we must settle for ‘truth
on balance’ (Werbner 2001:266).
The Knowledge of Witches
Divination is a powerful way, as Evans-Pritchard (1937) argued for the
Azande, of finding answers to the question ‘why me?’ In Ghana, the ritual
knowledge possessed by shrine priests is seen as drawing upon the ‘liminal’
zone of the bush, a sacred and feared location of the invisible and supernatural
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(Rattray 1927). Nineteenth century cults such as Abirewa, a powerful talisman, owed their success to the marketing spin of ambitious entrepreneurs
who, as young men, travelled to the Northern Territories of Ghana to buy a
piece of Abirewa in order to enhance their wealth and prospects (McLeod
1975). This was particularly true among the Akan people of Asante Region,
Central Ghana, where entrepreneurs in the early twentieth century, wishing
to take advantage of a changing economic climate, commonly consulted
diviners at shrines in order to prevent the interference of malignant forces,
such as those accessible through witchcraft (McCaskie 1981; McLeod 1981).
Goody (1957) records how such witchcraft cults and shrines tended to spring
up suddenly and just as suddenly disappear. This process reached its height
during the colonial domination of West Africa (Field 1960; Ward 1956) as
the 1940s and 1950s saw an increase in the number of shrines. As individual
accumulation grew at the expense of kinship obligations, the number of witchcraft accusations escalated (Field 1940).
While there exist many different types of West African shrine in Europe
practising a variety of activities, this paper focuses on those shrines in Europe
that trace a link to the Akan anti-witchcraft shrine in Ghana. For rather than
disappearing, in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, the
shrine has adapted to a global environment (Parish 1999, 2000, 2001a).
While, Akan shrine priests, whether in Ghana or in the diaspora, offer solutions to a range of clients’ misfortunes, the juncture where shrine-gods and
witches most conflict is over the bookmaking activities of shrines. During
fieldwork conducted since 1996 among Ghanaian gamblers in Liverpool, I
have met a number of shrine-priests in the United Kingdom and in Europe,
all of whom provide help and advice on successful betting (Parish 2005).
Research in Liverpool included participant observation and interviews with
key interlocutors who I accompanied to casinos in Liverpool and Manchester.
Liverpool has a long history of African diasporic settlement and the economic
exploitation of West Africa, including the movement of slaves between
West Africa, Liverpool and the United States, which constituted the so-called
Golden Triangle. Today, Liverpool’s African population differs from other
ethnic minority areas in that it has been established for several centuries.
For example, people of West African descent have lived in Liverpool since the
days of slavery in the eighteenth century. Geographically, the black population is concentrated in five city wards: Abercromby, Arundel, Granby, Picton
and Smithdown. In 1998, the Labour Force Survey estimated the total black
population of Merseyside to be 25,000. It is recognised that the size of
the local black population is underestimated since the long history of black
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immigration into Liverpool has reduced the number of households that can
be identified using birthplace data. The latest census, however, recognised different ethnic groups according to their country of origin as well as birth. It was
estimated that 2,495 Black Africans lived in Liverpool, of which eight-hundred-and-forty-three were born in West Africa, and over three-quarters of this
number were born in Nigeria and Ghana.
Zack, who I met in the mid-1990s, was one of my primary interlocutors in
Liverpool’s West African gambling circles. A chef in a local arts centre in Liverpool, I saw him regularly outside a betting shop in the neighbourhood where
I lived. He introduced me to other gamblers over several months in 1996,
among them Mike and Matthew who travelled around Europe looking for
work and Ray, a local businessman (Parish 2005). Through these men I heard
about shrines in London, Amsterdam, Paris and Hamburg that the gambler
visited. Using introductory letters I obtained from the Fetish Priest Association in Dormaa Ahenkro, Western Ghana, where I originally conducted fieldwork in the early 1990s, I gained access via my gambler friends from Liverpool
to shrine priests at the different shrines they visited. After a period of eight
months, a West African elder who had been given my introductory letter by
Matthew, one of the gamblers, and who ran a business selling talismans in
Paris, agreed to meet with me when he was next in London. He in turn introduced me to several shrine-priests in South London, and I was eventually
given access to their shrines and their clients. It was through these shrinepriests that I met their counterparts in Amsterdam and Hamburg and, later,
Abe, a shrine-priest in the Eastern suburbs of Paris who many gamblers,
including Mr. Baba, a gambler friend of Matthew, had spoken about, and
whose shrine was very popular. It is this shrine that is the focus of this paper.
Just as Goody (1957) records in colonial Ghana the ‘waxing and waning of
shrines’, many Akan shrines in the diaspora move about a great deal within
particular cities. At times they disappear all together, only to reappear elsewhere as the shrine priests set up a new base. On other occasions the shrines
remain closed-down for months at a time, before suddenly beginning to do
frantic business again. Sometimes located in apartment blocks and at other
times in hard-to-find rooms behind bars or above commercial establishments,
Abe’s shrine conducts weekly business selling talismans in the Parisian 18th
arrondissement in Goutte-d’or (Little Africa), a busy market area full of African boutiques, shops and speciality African restaurants. The ‘main’ home of
the shrine god, however, is in Abe’s home, which he shares with eight other
African immigrants and their families in a high-rise tower block in Clichysous-Bois, a decaying and down-at-heel residential area in the eastern banlieues
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(suburbs) of Paris. In this unlikely location, resting in a small alter on a table
in the small kitchen, a powerful talisman in the form of a carved figurine of
an Asante warrior has been covered in beads brought from Morocco. The
shrine priest, Abe, is an illegal immigrant. A Muslim, he claims to combine his
faith with what he calls the ‘craft of traditional West African religion’. Abe was
originally from Accra, Ghana, but had lived in Mali, Tunisia, Brussels and
then Paris for several years. He believed that not only could he read cowries,
but that he was possessed by the descendants of the Asante war gods. While
there are many such shrines to be found nowadays scattered among the larger
cities of Europe, offering solutions to a wide range of problems, this shrine
specialises in financial affairs and the priest of the shrine advertises his services
through word-of-mouth as a broker and bookmaker. It is because of this
expertise and its growing reputation that this shrine has become central to the
betting of the Ghanaian gamblers in North West England.
On visits to shrines, I recorded the public claims of shrine priests such as
Abe that they track the trails of information left by witches. The view he highlighted was that witches were invariably failed businesswomen, envious of the
success of others to accumulate wealth. Their power stems not only from an
evil bodily substance, found in the vagina of the witch, but is expressed in
their ability to see and hear anything in their immediate vicinity, and among
kin scattered around the world. This capacity to be all-knowing comes not
only from gossip that a witch eavesdrops upon unseen. She also has at her
disposal information about relatives’ addresses, their telephone and mobile
numbers, bank account details, the schools their children attend, the number
plates of the vehicles they drive, and passwords to internet accounts. She is the
ultimate fraudster, able to trick others into giving her information. With this
information she then causes havoc in their lives – physically, financially, morally and socially. Which of the victims from her kinship pool she chooses to
attack may be entirely random.
In an opaque world of misinformation and anxiety, this power gives the
witch an advantage. For example, Abe told me, it is often the case that individuals do not look closely at their bank statements, so she may steal money;
she may steal their mail so that they do not receive important letters; she may
write anonymous, malicious emails to their employers and she may send rude
texts to their friends. She is able to throw a metaphorical darkness over not
only over her own actions, but over the lives of those whom she wishes to
harm. Her actions blind her victims into not knowing who or what is behind
their problems. They find it impossible to trace or confront the root cause of
a problem, such as the disappearance of a number of emails or an incorrect
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bank statement or missing post, in a complex world where there are so many
agencies to deal with and the individual feels utterly helpless when confronted
with problems of this nature. This is one of the reasons, it has been suggested
by shrine priests, that large areas of our lives no longer make sense, but go
unnoticed. It is not only evil that has blinded us; it is the witch herself who has
cloaked these areas in darkness. In our search for an explanation, she simply
leads us up blind alleyways and we become more perplexed.
Gambling, Morality and Witchcraft
Witchcraft among many Ghanaians is treated with the utmost seriousness; for
while public discourses abound, witchcraft is also, as we have seen, regarded as
the most secret and illicit of activities among kin. Significantly, secret gambling practices among Ghanaians have added to this illicitness, and there is
increasing demand for a betting-cum-shrine forecaster who can map West
African witchcraft narratives onto Western gambling practices (Parish
2005:118). Witchcraft discourses among kin thrive especially where the desire
of individuals to accumulate and consume is seen to conflict with kinship
obligations (Meyer 1995, 1999; Parish 2000, 2005). This is particularly the
case when gamblers like Mr. Baba, whose case is discussed below, wager large
sums of money at the expense of the needs of family members. The conflicting
perceptions of the Ghanaian family as the locus of need during times of economic insecurity, and a drain on the wealth of prosperous relatives, result in
‘quick wealth’ being seen as both a blessing and a curse (Parish 2005:118). In
other words, although money may have a liberating effect for the possessor, it
can lead also to an asocial disposition and a denial of community (Lentz 1998;
Van der Geest 1997). Such was their fear of a witch discovering their covert
gambling activities and (illicit) winnings, combined with their worry of cheating relatives of much needed cash, that gamblers go to enormous lengths to
conceal their betting (Parish 2005).
This emotional struggle was exemplified by the case of Mr. Baba, an Asante
from Kumase who lived in Hume, Manchester, but who worked in Liverpool
City Centre in the Rope Walks District. Mr. Baba was a gambler introduced
to me by Zack in Liverpool. He was born and raised in Manchester to a Ghanaian father and English mother 41 years ago. During his childhood, he visited Kumase a couple of times to see relatives, and recalls during his childhood
the many different relatives coming to stay at the family home for differing
periods of time. As an adult, he has visited Ghana many times. Originally
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training as a teacher, he had planned to return to Ghana for a short time to
carry out this vocation. Subsequently, in his mid-twenties, he switched careers
and retrained as a computer technician. He later went into business selling
computer programs in Europe, and has now set up a business in Liverpool
that also exports computers to West Africa. With the money he has earned
from his businesses, he loves to gamble in the many casinos in Northwest
England, but he has also visited casinos throughout the world. He has always
known about witchcraft and the many shrines particularly found in rural areas
in Ghana, set up to combat evil spirits.
It was while in Accra on business and after an unsuccessful night’s gambling
that Mr. Baba decided, along with some friends, to travel to a shrine priest
who was reputed to be able to solve all kinds of financial problems. He
attended the shrine but despite this, he did not find that his gambling was any
more successful. Visiting such a shrine, he felt out of place. A self-confessed
sophisticated businessmen, he told me that he felt that he was buying into
something ‘primitive and superstitious’ that had no place in his modern world,
and never returned. Several years later, however, while out socialising one
night, he heard of a shrine-priest ‘doctor’ in Hamburg, Germany. His business had not been doing well. His friend thought that there was no harm in
asking for some sort of spiritual protection. The home of the priest in Hamburg reminded him of the shrine he had visited in the Kumase Region many
years before. But this time he did not feel out of place. The shrine-priest traded
in all types of knowledge – stocks, shares, but also his favourite hidden pastime – gambling. Subsequently, Mr Baba visited this shrine several times a
year to receive ‘spiritual advice’ on gambling tips, and when it eventually
closed due to the death of the shrine priest he subsequently travelled to its
sister shrine in Paris, in Clichy-sous-Bois. I accompanied him and, at the invitation of Abe, the shrine priest, have subsequently stayed in Clichy-sous-Bois
on many occasions during 2003 to 2005.
Little Africa and Champions League Betting
The Clichy-sous-Bois shrine not only offered information. Abe also enabled
Mr. Baba to construct his own web of knowledge in order to ward off threats
to his financial security. To understand how Mr. Baba did so, it is important
to examine the information that is traded when a gambling bet is placed. This
dialogue with the priest involves specific information about the specific event
to be gambled upon – in the case of horseracing, the turf, the running form of
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the horse; in football, the form of the team and then the statistics for each
individual player – goals scored, fouls conceded, passes and tackles. Typically
among gamblers, reams and reams of statistics are readily available and need
to be consulted. In Mr. Baba’s case, although the form of his local football
team was good, his own personal circumstances were not. He was particularly
anxious about whether the recent losses he had incurred in business meant
that he would be unsuccessful if he placed a large bet. He needed the certainty
that his own ‘bad luck’ would not jeopardise that of the team. In particular,
he felt that there were ‘evil’ spirits around him. He dreamt that a witch was
chasing him through the streets of Manchester, throwing his money around
to passers-by. He took this as an omen that he needed to be financially astute
and that the shrine-priest would understand this and rid him of this anxiety.
He felt that otherwise, with anxiety lingering over him, all future bets would
be unsuccessful. His predicament had therefore exceeded the usual one of
learning useful information needed in order to make an informed bet on his
team – their form, the form of their opponents etc., but also of unravelling the
secret gossip and speculation that he felt was traded between those kin who
wished him harm – the witch and her co-conspirators. Although Mr. Baba
was interested in knowing what ‘malicious’ gossip was being spread about him
by witches, he was not particularly interested in discovering or naming the
perpetrators of witchcraft. Indeed, he expected that successful men such as he
would be the target of witchcraft. Accepting this, he simply wanted to win
whenever he placed a bet, free of the doubt that a witch would undermine
him. In the long term, he was determined to continue to gamble as much
money as he desired and to keep this a private matter free of ‘prying eyes’. I
now turn to look at one example of this shifting system of information and the
experts who can decode this in relation to one event – the Champions League
Final 2005 involving Mr. Baba’s favourite team, Liverpool.
In May 2005, Liverpool won the Champions League, beating its Italian
rivals AC Milan on penalties in extra time. This had been a long route of
anxiety for both the club and its supporters, such as Mr. Baba. Especially after
losing against Olympiacos of Greece and AS Monaco in the early group stage,
Mr. Baba felt that this was evidence that witches were toying with supporters –
persuading them to bet more and more only for the witch to make sure that
they lost. For Mr. Baba this was a sure sign that the most powerful witches in
his own family were after him and were employing powerful curses to make
sure that the money he had already staked on Liverpool would be lost.
Although he supported many relatives both in Ghana and in Europe financially, he admitted that if he did not spend so much on his own guilty pleasure
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he would have more to share. He felt sure that some relatives knew about his
secret pastime and that they had bought ‘evil’ talismans designed to prevent
him winning any further. This was their revenge for cheating them out of
previous winnings, and not giving them the money he had promised to build
a new family house outside of Kumase. He also felt anxious about his betting
up to that point on Liverpool. Although not betting on them to win the
Champions League in the early stages of the competition, he had wagered
significant sums on spread bets, but felt that this was not paying dividends and
that he should concentrate more on the actual results of each game.
How had his gambling patterns progressed? At the beginning of the competition, offering odds of only 5-1 at the start of their campaign, local bookmakers were not inundated with bets. However, as the competition progressed,
other types of bet proved more popular – betting on the first goal scorer, last
goal scorer, the score, sendings-off, first corner, goal, etc. By far the most
popular among serious gamblers is spread betting – you buy and sell trades.
The firm gives its prediction in the form of a spread on an event. The punter
can either buy or sell. So, in the case of Liverpool and AC Milan, the firm will
predict that the first goal will be scored between the 36th and the 43rd minute. If a client thinks that the first goal will be scored before the 36th minute
then he sells and if he thinks that the first goal will be scored after the 43rd
minute then he buys. A client will nominate a stake – for example, £10 a
minute, and wait to see what happens. So if he bought the first goal at £10 a
minute and the first goal was scored in the 64th minute, he would make 21
times his £10 stake: £210. If, on the other hand, the first goal was scored in
the twentieth minute, he would lose 23 times £10: £230. The firm makes its
profit on the spread (i.e. between 36 and 43 minutes). Unlike ‘traditional’
betting, a client has much more control. If he had bought the first goal, i.e.
predicted that it would not be scored until much later in the match – but then
there is a lot of goal mouth activity at the end of the first half, he can always
close his bet by accepting the sell side of the current spread which will, of
course, have moved upwards to, say, 68-71 – meaning that he would close at
68 and win 36 times (i.e. 68 minus 32).
Divining against the Odds
At the anti-witchcraft shrine in Paris, spread betting for any game is determined in the following ways. Abe, the shrine priest, asks the client to write his
numbers on a piece of paper on which he also writes his own numbers. Often
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in order to advertise previous successes, he brings in numbers from previous
games. A bag of cowries of different colours is thrown. Abe then examines the
cowries arranged in rows. Abe, Mr. Baba confided to me, was known to have
kept account of every configuration of every minute a goal, free kick, corner
and goal kick was given for a game between Ghana and Ivory Coast in the
recent African Confederations Cup, and could show how each corresponded
with ‘lucky’ numbers given to ‘anonymous’ clients. Each goal kick, for example, given to Ghana had occurred in or near a denomination of 4 (14) (16)
(31) 36 (44) (40), (45) (80) (86). The witch, so it was advertised, could not
beat the fours and all bets placed on the foregoing minutes made money for
the client, who could not be traced!
For an individual fee, usually between 30 and 60 Euros, cowries could also
be thrown by Abe to dictate exact times of goals for the client. In some
instances, it was felt that Liverpool simply would not score before the seventh
minute, and this was deemed an unlucky number for many clients. Some
numbers were deemed unlucky or black – the shadow of the witch was near,
and Liverpool would never score during this period. In most private consultations, Abe, I observed, asked for a favourite number to be written down; for
example, a registration number plate, house number, number of children,
number of bus to work, etc. By throwing cowries he could work out if Liverpool was likely to score during those minutes. For some reason minutes 56
and 81 were the most popular for predicting when Liverpool was likely to
score, thus attracting a wide range of spread betting. Abe thought that no
immediate witchcraft presence could be detected, but that Mr. Baba had evil
hanging over certain numbers that he should never bet on, and should seek to
avoid in all aspects of his life since, even if he won, he would lose as the witch
would for certain steal his winnings. Other numbers detected a guilty conscience – the greatest fear of the gambler was that Abe would feel that he was
withholding something from him (usually past winnings that he had promised to the priest). In the latter case – detected as a guilty conscience – chickens are thrown to decide on this. If they land head up, the client may confess
any wrongdoing and then bet again, free in the knowledge that the shrine god
is on his side.
Generally speaking, all gamblers betting on the Champions League Final,
as for any significant game, were advised to place a large amount of money on
their spread. Mr. Baba placed bets on Liverpool scoring between the 81st and
90th minute. Abe ‘advised’ him to buy the first goal at £40 a minute, having
predicted that any number with a six, zero or two would be lucky (62) and to
choose a bookmaker offering odds that the first goal would be scored in the
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minutes based on a permutation of six, zero or two. At another shrine, in South
London, however, Mr. Baba recalled, it was felt that being from Manchester, a
city near to Liverpool, a witch was more likely to be watching Mr. Baba’s activities, and she would prevent him from winning a spread, so that he should concentrate on the score alone. At still another shrine in London, he was advised to
make the same bet as the first because a witch would want him to win, although
she would try to steal the money later. To protect himself he should also buy a
talisman.
Talismans and Gambling
Odds are lengthened or shortened depending on the talisman purchased.
African diviners sell a variety of spiritual medicines to a flourishing market of
occult medicines and talismans, supplying customers eager to access and
manipulate unseen forces by whatever means are available. Among West African gamblers, objects can be fashioned into a variety of talismans, and have
the power to repel evil spirits, as well as the evil thoughts and intentions of
one’s enemies. Talismans range from the traditional cattle tail, small packets
of herbs and medicines worn in little pouches about the body, to common
consumer items which have been infused by the diviner with ‘secret’ powers
(Parish 2005). More often than not, a talisman is simply a common consumer
item that shrine clients have purchased from a diviner, such as a ‘magical’ small
box or piece of paper. They are purchased for a variety of economic and social
purposes – to predict lotto numbers, bring good fortune, ward off witchcraft
perpetuated by greedy, envious relatives and offer protection from curses
issued by relatives.
Often in West Africa there is a wider moral symbolism attached to the
purchase of a talisman, and stories circulate of diviners who carry out the work
of God, and Satanic ritual specialists who offer diabolical reward, the money
of hell (Shaw 2001:67). Popular narratives told throughout the region also
centre on individuals who became deranged because they purchased an evil
talisman for vengeance or ‘immoral’ reasons, and falsely accused an innocent
person of wishing them harm without good reason. In these circumstances in
which cause and effect are confused, it is believed that the diviner will cause
the dishonest intentions of individuals to rebound on them and not their
victims (Parish 2005).
Correspondingly, at Clichy-sous-Bois shrine, objects bought by Mr. Baba
for earlier matches included rings and other items worn about the body and
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washed in ‘sacred medicines’. Mr. Baba had made such a purchase for the game
when Liverpool had narrowly beaten Chelsea in the Champions league semifinal game. The more expensive talismans are reserved for combating witchcraft, not to ensure Liverpool will win, for, as Mr. Baba observed, ‘a witch will
kick out and chase . . . on the pitch . . . break the star players ankle’. He had also
purchased a cattle tail stitched with a rosette of Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool
captain, and shirt number. Although very costly, he felt sure that his spread betting would be more successful with this in his hand.
Leading up to the final in May, Mr. Baba dissected every aspect of his life,
looking for clues as to whether he would win or not. Each of the talismans he
had bought also involved a number of rituals which Mr. Baba told me he had
to carry out in order for them to work and the witch to be distracted. The
strategies of the witch, he repeatedly told me, replicate the complexities of the
world that we live in. She is, he said, a cause and a by-product of this world.
Like commodities, witches fly around the world and circulate in the capitalist
economy. More often than not the circulation of evil is compared by the
shrine priests with whom I spoke, to a wheel of fortune. The witch, Abe said,
has a number of unsuspecting victims in her sight. He can reduce this possibility, by nudging the wheel on, so to speak, to its next victim. Talismans and
their rituals do just this. They blind the witch so that she does not know which
way to turn. Her information becomes obsolete. Her co-conspirators are
feeding her more and more contradictory information about the best person
to attack. Her point of view becomes uncertain. She has too much information at her disposal about her victims, and too much information causes her
inertia. She becomes trapped in a matrix of detail, of words and no action.
Abe compared this to the particular letters on a computer keyboard being
removed. A person through instinct might know where individual keys are
located and press these, but the wrong letter might appear on the screen.
This confuses them further. Abe is able to bewilder the witch in a similar fashion by making her question everything and anything, hence making her information incalculable.
Mr. Baba did win a substantial sum of money when Liverpool won the
Champions League trophy. However, he lost this a couple of months later
while betting on County Cricket games involving Lancashire Cricket Club.
Witchcraft, he felt, was to blame for his misfortune, but he also confessed to a
guilty conscience – having lost the money that he had not only promised to
family members in Ghana, but also to his wife, to buy a new kitchen. Nonetheless, he resolved to carry on gambling and ‘beat the witches’, describing
how his technical knowledge of different types of betting, combined with the
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91
shrine priests’ knowledge of witchcraft, would eventually defeat those women
who wished him financial misery and who stood in his way!
Conclusion
Both activities, witchcraft and gambling, are subject to immense social and
moral pressures surrounding the consumption and distribution of wealth, and
are used in a novel way to articulate private anxiety within transnational social
networks about economic accumulation (Parish 2005:118). Gambling, a
secret activity, becomes for the individuals in this paper a key component for
earning large sums of illicit, hidden wealth, but this ‘immoral’ wealth also
becomes a focus of witchcraft and of transnational gossip and innuendo that
travels quickly along the links and chains of social networks. Ritualised action
among gamblers at shrines allows for a little piece of certainty and safety from
witchcraft to be recreated, while interpersonal relationships between diasporic
kin become entangled with paranoia and anxiety. In other words, anti-witchcraft shrines are less about finding an answer to the classic Azande ‘why me?’
question or about discovering the precise identity of the perpetrator of witchcraft. Rather, they are about the construction of workable social relations in
the midst of a deluge of arguments and jealousies. Information becomes a precious commodity in warding off conspiratorial danger. The anti-witchcraft
shrines that have been established and spread throughout Europe (and the
United States) epitomise this cosmology: the shrine handpicks valuable knowledge from the swathes of information that comprise the social relations of
Africans in the diaspora, while also protecting this commodity from the witch,
trapping her in a deluge of obsolete and useless facts.
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