Law of Witchcraft in Uganda

Abstract

Use of supernatural or magical powers is a prominent phenomenon since antiquity till date. In our latter days, successful businessmen have been accused of amassing illicit wealth through the practice of witchcraft and magic, notions of blood money. Imagine such scene of a woman sitting on broom, holding it at its long handle and perhaps naked, freely floating in space with ease like directed balloon. One wonders about any possibility of mysterious healing. Like who does that or can do that? Pursuing a course in witchcraft and magic at one of the best universities on the face of the earth, another thought coming handy. Yet furthermore, discovering a world super power like America with legislation on sorcery is too much to imagine. Headlines on the media about cadavers being exhumed for body parts, human sacrifices, albinos and twins mostly being the major victims and or people being banished from their homes for witchcraft. To commit oneself whether wholly or partially in a trade where the bravest fear and courageous menfolk and womenfolk shun off is precisely a mindboggling manifestation of human uniqueness. Whether witchcraft is a vocation, art or science is a specimen for test and inquiry. Interest has been rather demonstrated in the manner of its practice, purpose and impact on third parties. The peace wizards and witches substitute with despondency, filling melancholy in place of ecstasy, causing dread and insecurity of being must be alarming. Consequent incompatibility arising out of witchcraft between its practitioners and their subjects is a piece worth taking interest in. In the interest of harmonious existence and purposes of humanity, understanding the operation of witchcraft is fundamental. Periodically, masses have devoured stories of witch hunt, sorcery, and magic on one hand from the media. Perhaps, no human practice has been readily contended than witchcraft. To assess the merits in both anecdotal and philosophical arguments in support or against witchcraft, one ought to embrace all kinds of information, empirical and non-empirical. Obviously, on no account can anyone do what he or she detests save on coercion maybe. I’m simply saying and not confirming whether this practice is palatable or not. And neither, can it be stressed enough that the sentiments about witchcraft are illegitimate. Witchcraft practices have encumbered abilities of communities to socially coexist, caused economic inequity as people lamely relate witchcraft and blood wealth, and destabilizing political corporation as often times, perpetrators have been exorcized, banished, brutally tortured by angry mobs and much more1 . I fervently discuss the origins and manifest of witchcraft on Gods earth underscoring the regulations of the same and essentially why we are doing the same. The case of Uganda v. Zenatio Kombe, H.Ct.Cr. Session No. 536 of 1967, H.Ct. Monthly Bulletin No. 136 of 1967. The accused killed a woman after being advised by a witch doctor that the same woman had charmed his penis so that it could not function when he slept with his wife.