ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the production of child witches in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). After a brief description of the phenomenon as it occurs today in the capital, Kinshasa, I will try to analyse this phenomenon by looking at the intricacies of intergenerational relationships in the DRC's contemporary urban scene. Rather than describing children as mere victims of irresponsible parents, elders and other figures of authority such as preachers (belonging to the so-called ‘churches of awakening’, often of neo-Pentecostalist persuasion), who relegate them to new zones of seclusion and social abandonment, I will try to outline the specific forms of social and spiritual insecurity to which both children and adults are exposed, and which have thoroughly transformed family life and the shape of networks of care. The emerging picture is one of highly complex intergenerational interactions unfolding within Congolese cities, as well as in their various diasporas, and forcing us to reconsider standard notions of agency and victimhood. I will end this chapter by briefly discussing the responses of local and international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to the phenomenon of ‘child witches’.
