Calling out to the witchdoctor constituency

I’M beginning to think that Rwandans have short-term amnesia. Development has been fast and the people have adjusted even faster. This is why people will curse a newly paved road for lacking in street lamps and markings. Or even having a difficult street name to remember. It’s not enough to turn a bumpy dirt road into smooth macadam; the road needs to be lit up with twinkling markers like an airfield runway. However, if we are a nation of demanding hard-to-satisfy people, we are also a people who love hearing anything positive about ourselves [I should write a piece called “The Vain Nation” one of these days].We are delighted in hearing about how well economic development and social progress is going all the while marveling at reports of disorder in other [especially African] countries. This may explain the self-congratulatory tone of much of our media. If bad news sells, in Rwanda better news (about ourselves) sells even more. Last week’s positive news about Rwanda is that we are the least superstitious country in Africa. It turns out only 5 per cent of Rwandans are superstitious.An article in a Kenyan paper, Sunday Nation, on the links between witchcraft and politics in Kenya made a brief comparison on witchcraft trends in neighbouring countries. Citing a Pew Research Centre survey, the paper reported that 25 per cent of Kenyans and 60 per cent of Tanzanians believed in the power of the witchdoctor. Given how many old ladies have been murdered in Tanzania on the allegation of being ‘witches’, such a high figure is easy to believe. Interestingly, a lot of the believers of sorcery described themselves as Christian or Muslim.As a person with a prickly relationship with all things religious, I would have classified all religion as superstition if it were up to me. Many readers will naturally disagree with this arguing that there is a difference between sitting in church/the mosque on Sunday/Friday listening to tales of talking, and really persuasive, snakes [I don’t know the Islamic version of the Adam and Eve story] and visiting a guy who chants, mumbles and wears animal print. That is of course their right and it is also the view taken by the pollsters.I would have thought the number would have been higher than 5 per cent given stories of river worshippers in Gicumbi, the dread with which people consider certain clans, the dirty looks one gets for suggesting mutton as a meal and mutterings of flying witches [no broomsticks] in Kibungo [Ngoma District].Still, while 5 per cent is the lowest in Africa and is a credit to either our education or the hard work of the missionaries, it’s not an insignificant number. It means that, in macro terms, more than 500,000 Rwandans are sneaking off to shrines and drinking bizarre potions. On their own they could create Rwanda’s second largest city. So while we smile and congratulate ourselves about being least superstitious on the continent, take some time to wonder about one in every 20 who believes in some truly incredible stuff.