ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes how mythic consciousness creates and maintains the phenomenon of witchcraft in Africa and how the phenomenon engenders the abuse of human rights. To fully explore the human rights implications of mythic consciousness in Africa, it pursues the question: What image of the human person do Africans transmit in their stories and other forms of cultural production? In many African countries, two institutions frame narratives that influence people’s lives more powerfully than does any other: religion and cultural productions such as Nigeria’s Nollywood films. In the past few decades marked by economic and social uncertainty, both have developed a common popular theme: spirit possession or witchcraft. This chapter undertakes comparative analyses of such films and Rungano Nyomi’s I Am Not a Witch (2017) as examples of the dangers and remedies of mythic consciousness.
