Why Olivia and the goat horn are making headlines near you

“I placed a goat’s horn into the stomach of my sister to prevent her from having children,” says Olivia, 19.

It’s not my usual morning reading, but it’s compelling.

It’s a news story about a girl who’s been a witch since she was 5, and is now being exorcised in a church whose congregation are “stunned”.

She continues: “They gave my mother’s heart to me to eat and our queen witch feasted on my mother’s head, as my culture demands.”

Hell that’s bad, though maybe Mama had it coming, having ignored Olivia’s wishes to be exorcised for 10 years, by which time it was too late.

“When I was 15 my mother took me to a Man of God in Ivory Coast…but a strong burst of smoke came out of my nose and mouth as the pastor faced me…he was not strong spiritually to face the witchcraft spirit in me, so we left.”

Olivia’s troubled, for sure, and she’s been on the rampage against her family.

Among ills inflicted are abject poverty (she has stored their savings in her cauldron), a lifetime of pain for her grandma, in whose stomach she has placed a shell, and the headless, heartless mother, eaten.

And the goat sister. For she has spent “the last ten years…going to all lengths to find a solution to her barrenness, wasting a lot of time and money in the process.”

I lack grasp of matters cloven-hoofed, but shouldn’t belly-full-of-goat-girl have mentioned it to her physician?

Luckily it doesn’t matter. A preacher, Prophet Michael Osei, can save her. He can make her vomit the womb-held horn (figure out the exit route for yourself, I am foxed), exorcising Olivia and stunning his (rural) congregation in one sweep. Thank God for men of God, for they can save the world, the witches and hell fire! even the football.

And their PR machine’s not bad either.

The story’s amusing, but I bristle, because I think it’s also pernicious. It’s running on at least two popular news outlets in Ghana and there is no indication that a journalist has done anything to question the legitimacy.

I check the reader feedback. It’s a mix of fear of “witches and wizards”, calls for “a proper journalist to investigate” (at last!) “who this queen witch is” (oh), and something sensible from Naa Shomey: “This is the kind of thing that makes such false prophets perpetuate such nonsense. Why is it that most accused witches are women and young children?”

Thanks to Naa. I think she has hit the nail on the head.

The likely origin of the story is a revivalist church, which confirm or "discover" signs of witchcraft, operate on a profit-making basis and most that practise exorcism will put on a performance like Olivia’s for the purposes of financial gain.

Promise double digit dollars to a teenager with her heart set on some slingbacks and a night out, coach her and poof! she’ll ham it up about the goat and the smoke and the bloke who couldn’t fix her. The crooked bombast of a preacherman gets a quick return on investment, winning the support of troubled families who have no access to basic social services, and use the church as their moral reference point. Pass the collection plate!

The knock-on effects are felt as far apart as Tanzania and Tottenham, Angola and Hackney, Congo, Tower Bridge and Harlesden. You name it.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, Unicef estimates that there are 25,000 abandoned children in Kinshasa and more than 40,000 country-wide. More than 70% have been accused of witchcraft.

One of those children is Cedric, who was 8 when he watched his village, just outside Kinshasa, turn against him after his father was killed in an accident. He and his brother, denounced as sourcerers, were beaten with stones and chased away. “I knew I was not a witch. They only did that because they did not want to look after us,” Cedric said. They sought refuge in an aunt, who gave them to a pastor to be exorcised. Together, the aunt and the pastor beat the children until they ran away. Cedric lost his brother along the way, joined a gang and slept in “stinking alleys, oozing untreated waste”.

Pastor Michel Kabi, who runs an organisation set up to counter witchcraft, says accusing children of sorcery is an easy way out: “People are too poor and desperate themselves and are frightened of having to look after children too.”

Children who are uncomfortably close to your doorstep.

They include Victoria Climbiè, an Ivorian girl who was tortured and killed in Tottenham due to witchcraft accusations. Boy Adam, whose mutilated torso was discovered floating in the River Thames, and Child B, an 8-year-old child brought to the UK from Angola, who was beaten, cut and had chilli rubbed in her eyes after her aunt and two others believed she was a witch.

All of these cases had their origins in Africa.

I called one of the media outlets to ask about their editorial policy. Is it appropriate to publish a story with no reference to the possibility that the facts might not stand up? And that ultimately mask a practice that in many other cultures would be called child abuse?

“Our editorial policy is our own business and is not for public knowledge,” says someone there. He’s a journalist. I ask what he thinks of it, personally. “It’s not right,” he concedes.

Western media stands rightfully accused of using large-scale suffering and backwardness as a means of reporting Africa (I feel dangerously close to falling into that camp, too).

But here are popular, urban Ghanaian media outlets giving credence to practices that demoralise Africa and give the rest of the world the idea that for this continent, there still is no hope.

Quite sticks a goat horn in my Hallowe’en spirit.