ABSTRACT
Ghana was the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa, after achieving independence in 1957, to launch a process of recognition of traditional medicine. Local therapeutic resources were identified by Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, and used as a political tool for nation building, the construction of national identity and the exemplification of the “true African culture”. The first outcome of this process led to the establishment of the Ghana Psychic and Traditional Healers Association (GHPTHA) in 1960,1 which is still considered one of the most important associations at the national level. Why did Nkrumah identify native therapeutic resources as a political instrument, a shared symbol and a cross-cultural element for the new citizens of the state of Ghana? There were many elements, which led to the legitimization of traditional medicine in the postcolony2 – one primary factor was a direct response to the tendency of European colonial administrations to marginalize local therapeutic knowledge. The National Archives of Ghana3 contain numerous letters, comments, messages and statements from British officials that expressed a strong skepticism about the efficacy of traditional remedies. Such documents defined spiritual practices and local therapeutic cults – not only as magical and superstitious but, sometimes, also as maleficent acts. Moreover, the British colonial administration put numerous local cults at the margins of the legal system. Between 1912 and 1957, the British issued several antiwitchcraft acts in the ruled territories, using vague yet inclusive language to target variegated practices associated with the supernatural. Through an anthropological analysis of such historical documents, this chapter will examine the ways in which the British colonial administration defined witchcraft and categorically molded it into a ‘maleficent’ phenomenon. The following pages will focus, in particular, on political and legislative colonial language, which used the terms ‘witchcraft’, ‘occult’ and ‘supernatural’ interchangeably, compressing disparate, strongly heterogeneous cultural phenomena.
