Branded a Witch.... My take on the BBC 3 Documentary by Kevani Kanda.

(SIGH)

Kevani Kanda - BBC Branded a witch

This will be the most disturbing post I will ever post in my life.....  And there are many reasons for me to be angry.

I caught up with a documentary today and what I saw utterly shocked my husband and I; as a result I have lost my faith in humanity.

The documentary by Kevani Kanda, stemmed up as a result of the deaths of Victoria Climbié and Kristy Bamu.

Eight year old Victoria was tortured and killed in London in 2000 partly because her guardians believed she was possessed by demons. Her mother's boyfriend Carl Manning called Victoria "Satan" in his diary, writing that no matter how hard he hit her, she did not cry. During the abuse, Victoria was burned with cigarettes, tied for periods of more than 24 hours, and beaten with bicycle chains, hammers and cables. 

In the Christmas of 2010, Fifteen year old Kristy was killed by his sister Magalie Bamu and her partner Eric Bikubi at their flat in Newham, east London. He was tortured with knives, sticks, metal bars, a hammer and chisel before being drowned in the bath in an attempt to exorcise him of the devil. He "begged to die", before slipping under the water. Kristy had been killed while he and his siblings were visiting Bikubi and Bamu for Christmas, the court was told.

Kevani Kanda  is a young British lady from DRC who decided to go back to Congo to dig deep into the dark and secretive world of faith-based child abuse and murder due to the witchcraft “kindoki” branding culture very widely practised there (and other parts of Africa of course.)

“Kindoki”, the Lingala word for witchcraft, is one of hundreds of words denoting spiritual evil in the hundreds of African languages spoken wherever Africans live.

Journeying from her home in London to her birthplace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kevani leaves her two sons behind and embarks on a journey to discover how ancient traditions have been hijacked in the name of Jesus, why families are singling out vulnerable children and hurting them and why toddlers are having to endure excruciating rituals in order to 'rid them of demons'. The deliverance rituals include torture, starvation, isolation and beatings.

The setting is in a deprived area of Kinshasa, where poor people blame anyone for their misfortune; be it poverty or disease someone has to be held accountable. While she was there she uncovers the shocking truth that even her own cousin has been accused of witchcraft “kindoki” and has been kicked out of the house - setting Kevani on a path to find her and confront her accusers.

Visiting churches in the DRC, Kanda finds children accused of witchcraft because they are disabled, wet the bed, suffer nightmares or are rude to their superiors. She finds that families put toddlers believed to be possessed through painful rituals to rid them of their “kindoki”.

Kevani visits a church in Kinshasa and, at first, says there is a “party-like atmosphere” which suddenly changes when she witnesses the pastors going down a line of children picking out those they suspect of having “kindoki”.

Asking how and why the pastors select the children, one of the pastors tells her that the holy spirit has revealed to him that these kids have been possessed by witchcraft.

He points at a girl and accuses her of !!EATING HER MOTHER.!!

One girl accused of witchcraft tells Kevani: “I had it. I had witchcraft. I came here and they helped me and I was healed. I was wetting the bed but now I don't do it any more.”

She goes to another church to witness what I would call a “kindoki” detox session.

A small boy aged 5 is kneeling on the dusty church floor and is force fed with several cups of hot palm oil; he cries out but is threatened by the adults, his parents are nowhere to be seen.

Kevani watches with a traumatised look and she can’t help it but cry..... She is told that the cleansing will last for three days where the boy will be deprived of food and only given some water.

She vows to return on the third day and when she does, the torture is still going on. At that point the boy is beaten, stretched, pinched, given a hot palm oil enema, is held upside down and while he screams is told not to shit the enema out or else he will be beaten some more.

In a society where parents kick their children out of the house by accusing them of witchcraft, Kevani visits a rehabilitation centre for children who are victims of the witch hunt. On the floor lies a brother and her sister who were doused in petrol and burnt by their relatives infront of their mother. The girl’s inner thighs are badly burnt and the boy has major burns.

Apart from disability, bed wetting or suffering nightmares, the proprietor of the rehabilitation centre tells Kevani that children are also accused of witchcraft as a result of being hated by a step parent, poverty or unexplainable circumstances e.g a relative falling sick.

The whole trip was very upsetting to her, and I bet it was to most people who watched the documentary. Being African (Kenyan), I do not believe in witchcraft but I am very much aware of the fact that beliefs in witchcraft are widespread – in town or countryside – and are also in present in Europe, where Africans have migrated in the last 50 years. They are a means of explaining the unequal distribution of good and bad fortune, and the occurrence of otherwise inexplicable misfortune.

The worst I had seen before Kevani’s documentary was a YouTube clip of a family from a community called the Kisii in Kenya getting burnt alive during a witch hunt and the experience traumatised me.....  Apart from the fact that I couldn’t believe that someone could have the guts to film the whole event and post it on YouTube, I just never thought it could be used as a way of abusing children.

I don’t have children neither do I have the desire to have them, but I do love children and  don’t think my strong protective instincts could let me sit down and watch anyone hurt a child; I would go out of my way to make sure that no child suffers in the hands of an adult.

Anyone who wouldn’t do the same is not fit to be part of the human race.

In religion, coincidence does not exist: the hand of either God or Satan may be seen in every event. To many Africans, this evil power is witchcraft.

In some areas of Africa, where civil wars and economic disasters have left society in disarray, the numbers of allegations have amounted almost to epidemics of accusations. The Congo and southern Nigeria can be particularly singled out, but accusations occur almost everywhere. Not all are taken seriously, but many are. Some are taken to pastors for exorcism, other people attempt their own.

New churches, started by Africans with a self-proclaimed "divine mission", have sprung up everywhere.

These churches do not "control" witchcraft beliefs, although they encourage and profit from them. The pastors of independent African churches may identify children as witches (for a fee) and are prepared to "cure" them (for a further fee) by exorcising the evil spirits.  Some people may feel protective of Religion, but the bottom line is, religion is the root of all evil. It has been used to destroy and hurt humanity in more ways that I can ever explain..... This is one of the many reasons I am an atheist.

Here is a BBC link to the Episode. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01swd7g/Branded_a_Witch/

Source and research: BBC, Guardian, ibtimes, Wiki