It seems the belief that the elderly are \u2018experts\u2019 in witchcraft is refusing to die in Africa. It is a big shame that the elderly who have taken care of us have been turned into \u2018unrepentant witches\u2019.<\/p>\n
Recently, Malawi has been experiencing torture of the elderly who are believed to have used their weapons of mass destruction to kill especially the youth. But witchcraft cannot come into a being because he or she has grown old.<\/p>\n
Belief in the spirit world of the ancestors has withstood colonialism, missionaries, organised religion, revolution, independence and modernisation throughout all of sub-Saharan Africa. Common beliefs about witchcraft and witches have been passed down from one generation to the next for centuries and in Malawi and many African countries, there is a belief that witches use the power of our ancestors against us. Witches have grey hair and red eyes. Death comes to those who have been bewitched. A young person cannot die unless they have been bewitched.<\/p>\n
But lately these long-held convictions about witches and witchcraft have become particularly evident as village mobs use them to target the elderly and justify killing them in heinous ways from poisoning to burning in order to stop the evil juju (magic) from destroying the village\u2019s good fortune. Daughters and sons as well as immediate family accuse elderly men and women of witchcraft in order to cash in on their inheritances that much sooner. And Africa is not the only continent that has engaged in the reoccurrence of witch-hunting. New Guinea, India and Mexico have also killed their fair share of witches in the past few years.<\/p>\n
Europe also contended with its own obsession with witches. For 300 years (1450-1750), countries in Europe did their best to eradicate the presence of witches in their lives by conducting 100,000 witchcraft trials where a good half of these led to the execution of the \u2018witch\u2019.<\/p>\n
Finding witches and removing them for the good of the community was a tribal affair even in colonial Kenya. In the famous Wakamba Witch-killing Trials of 1931-1932, Mwaiki, a Kamba woman was killed in 1931 by tribal leaders and members of the ruling council of her tribe after they established the fact that she had bewitched another woman in the village. The case was known as Rex v. Kumwaka s\/o of Mulumbi and 69 Others, and tried in the Supreme Court of Kenya. Sixty of the original 70 defendants were sentenced to death. Their death sentences were ultimately commuted by the Governor of Kenya but the defendants were sentenced to prison terms instead. In their defence, the men maintained that as leaders of the tribe, they had the legal right to identify and remove witches for the good of the community by killing them in the traditional way.<\/p>\n
But what is responsible for causing this recent resurgence in the preoccupation with witchcraft and the need to rid the community of witches? According to Jenni Irish in her article, Massacre. Muthi, and Misery: Women and Political Violence (1993), in regions where the belief in witchcraft is entrenched, accusations of witchcraft and witch-hunts escalate. Communities under threat seem to revert to long-held superstitions.<\/p>\n
In his report, Poverty and Witch Killing \u2013 2005, Review of Economic Studies, Edward Miguel used rainfall variations to estimate the impact of what he called \u2018income shocks\u2019 on murders in rural Tanzania. He found that extreme rainfall (drought or flood) led to a large increase in the number of witch killings (elderly woman killed by either relatives or mob violence) but no other types of murders. He claims that poverty and violence go hand in hand due to poor harvests and famines and determined that there was twice as many of this type of murder in years with extreme rainfall as in other years. Kenya\u2019s unemployment rate rose to a staggering 40 percent in 2013 compared to a mere 12 percent in 2006. As of 2013, 16 million Kenyans had no formal employment and 70 percent of those who are employed are underpaid. (United Nations Development Programme, 2013).<\/p>\n
Older people play a vital role in African society today. Across the continent, millions of families would not survive without the contribution of older people \u2013 from caring for orphaned grandchildren and infected own children to providing much-needed household income. The African traditional forms of caring for older people are breaking down. In southern Africa, it is estimated that 50 percent of double orphans are cared for by older people. Yet older people are often excluded from development programmes.<\/p>\n
Despite this indispensable contribution, many older people in Africa continue to experience deepening poverty, discrimination, violence and abuse and are unable to access entitlements that are theirs by right. Many older people live in rural areas where there are fewer services. They experience economic exclusion and are often denied employment and access to insurance or credit schemes. They also encounter social exclusion due to age discrimination and changing roles and practices within the family. Literacy rates among older people \u2013 especially older women \u2013 remain low and are often lower than for the population as a whole.<\/p>\n
A survey of 15 African countries found that in 11 of these countries the proportion of older people living in poverty was higher than the national average. This is particularly the case when older people live in families with young children. It is imperative that older people and ageing issues are included in national development initiatives such as poverty reduction processes, strategies and budgets.<\/p>\n
It is not a secret that age dependency is rising each passing day in most parts of Africa. Mauritius already had an age dependency ratio of 10.9 in 2010 and this is projected to rise to 25 by 2030 and 37 by 2050, which is at par with many East Asian economies. Aging issues in Europe and parts of Asia have already become an economic and fiscal policy concern over the last few years and will remain so for the foreseeable future and it could also become a problem for sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n
With 43 percent of the population below the age of 15 and only three percent above the age of 65, sub-Saharan Africa is a predominantly young continent. The problems emanating from an ageing population such as rising age dependency ratios and increasing healthcare costs are far over the horizon as far as the continent is concerned. However, this may not remain so for long and definitely not for all the countries.<\/p>\n
According to the World Population Prospects 2012 Revision, Vol II, United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs\/Population Division, the population above working age (65) was 26 million in 2010 but will quadruple to 102 million by 2050. The age dependency ratio in sub-Saharan Africa is very low and will remain so until 2050, rising only to eight percent (per 100 people of working age) from 5.8 percent in 2010.<\/p>\n
In comparison, East Asia has already had an age dependency ratio of 13.3 in 2010 which will rise to 41.8 in 2050. Even by 2075, the age dependency ratio will only have reached 13 in sub-Saharan Africa, the same as the current level in East Asia. The very low share of the population above working age in the total population of sub-Saharan Africa reflects the fact the region has only just entered its demographic transition, unlike East Asia which began its demographic transition several decades ago.<\/p>\n
The projections above imply that sub-Saharan Africa does not face any significant challenges from population aging for at least four to five decades; however, some individual countries are ahead in terms of their demographic transition than the average for the region and will face rapidly rising age dependency ratios.<\/p>\n
On an average, the projected age dependency ratios remain low in sub-Saharan Africa, which implies that elderly people will not become a burden on the economy; important social challenges pertaining to ageing could still arise in the region over the coming decades. The absolute numbers of elderly people in sub-Saharan Africa will rise sharply (reflecting rapid population growth over the last few decades).<\/p>\n
Sub-Saharan Africa currently lacks formal institutions to provide for elderly people; only a small share of the workforce (mainly public servants and those employed in formal sector businesses) is entitled to a retirement pension. Most elderly people rely on informal kinship-based social security mechanisms for support but the efficacy of these informal systems may be eroded over time by changes in lifestyle patterns such as urbanisation.<\/p>\n
Hence governments in sub-Saharan Africa may face increasing pressure over the next few decades to put in place more comprehensive formal systems of financial support for elderly people, funded from government budgets. Because the number of elderly people will remain relatively small as a share of the total population, this should be fiscally affordable if a more comprehensive pension provision were accorded priority in budget planning.<\/p>\n
However, given the severe strain which public finances face in most sub-Saharan Africa countries, whether governments will actually find room in their budgets for pension payments is far from certain. However, what is clear is that it is never too early to start addressing the aging problem; this is also the case for Africa. We can make a better Malawi and Africa if we respect the elderly. Growing old is not a curse but a blessing. Non-governmental organisations and the government machinery should support the elderly and involve them in developmental projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seems the belief that the elderly are \u2018experts\u2019 in witchcraft is refusing to die in Africa. It is a big shame that the elderly who have taken care of us have been turned into \u2018unrepentant witches\u2019. Recently, Malawi has been experiencing torture of the elderly who are believed to have used their weapons of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42868,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42865\/revisions\/42868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}