A desperate mother makes a painful sacrifice: she sends her son away to an uncertain future in order to spare him from an almost certain death.  The last thing she tells him is “Go, live and become” and these words will resonate heavily throughout the movie. Too young to understand what is happening to him, the unnamed 9 year old African boy poses as Schlomo as he is taken out of a refugee camp in Sudan and rescued by the Israeli authorities. It is 1985 and the Israeli government with the assistance of the United States is rescuing about 8000 Ethiopian Jews – also known as Falasha – in order to help them resettle in Israel. But our boy is not actually Jewish, and his arrival to Israel is both the miraculous event that saves his life and the heavy burden (his secret socio-cultural identity) that he will have to carry with him for the next 15 years.

Director Radu Mihaileanu’s touching movie, called Live and become, follows the story of this child growing up in Israel (played by Moshe Agazai as a boy, Mosche Abebe as an adolescent and Sirak M. Sabahat as a young adult)  while having to live a life built on a painful and frightening lie.

Schomo embarks on a journey that will ultimately shape his entire existence. In a way he is lucky: he escapes the daily struggles of the Ethiopian refugees, the hunger and deprivations he faced and his departure might very well have saved his life. But this is not the type of story we hear quite often in the West when a poor African boy is saved and brought to the West where he is warmly welcomed and supported by everyone he encounters. This is not a soap opera, but an epic journey through a society that undergoes social changes which are just as critical as the ones Schomo himself is forced to experience.

While he is adopted by loving and caring parents who do their best in assisting Schlomo through his difficult transition, he has to fight other unseen and unforeseen chimeras with profound social implications for his upbringing: bigotry, racism and social exclusion.  Schlomo, who is torn both by his secret and his ardent desire to fit in the new world, is constantly helped by his family and Ethopian-community leader Qes Amhra who makes it his mission to assist the boy in his quest for personal achievement.

Some critical scenes denote an extraordinary intellectual finesse of Romanian-born director and screenplay writer Radu Mihaileanu. When Schlomo is expelled from school because other parents are afraid he will contaminate their children with some “African diseases” the mother dramatically licks his face in an attempt to show that his son poses no danger. Overall, the character remains rather passive throughout the movie, which correctly suggests his internal turmoil, drama and pain. Schlomo poses for what he isn’t, a lie that dramatically affects and influences his inner life. This is an uneven process which critically influences the way he acts upon the world. For example, he enters a contest on Jewish laws and moral codes just to assert his place in the community.

The Falasha are progressively accepted in Israel but is not devoid of contradictions. When local rabbis try to purify the Falasha, we are witnessing a drama of astronomical proportions as characters like Schlomo realize that they are not fully wanted in their communities despite their sincere attempts to fit in. They skin color does not quite qualify them as members of the Chosen People. Which raises the question: how far do people have to go before they are accepted as equals upon moving to a new country?

From time to time, this beautiful drama is also laced with humor which seems to be an inspired technique meant to release the tension mounting up from the injustice and racism that the main character is forced to go through.

Live and become is ultimately a story that has never been told. The consequences of operation Moses, the struggle experienced by Ethiopian Jews in Israel, their quest for socio-cultural acceptance and personal identity had not been unexplored until Mihaileanu’s brilliant movie. Leaving creative decisions aside, this film brings a new perspective on a historical event that many of us have yet to internalize, understand and appreciate for what it meant to those affected by it.

Perhaps, Live and become is not only a story about Schlomo, but also one about the Israeli society as a whole, one that is also forced to internalize the social changes that happen often beyond people’s control.

One should at least watch this movie because it raises a very troublesome question: what really makes a person belong to any given society? An immigrant myself, I watched this movie thinking of the types of contradictions, cultural differences and difficulties that I myself have experienced after moving to the United States. The fact that Schlomo eventually finds his place and role in life was ultimately reassuring. This is a thought-provoking movie which requires energy and time to be digested.  It is also a timeless story which oddly captures both the weight and burden of history.

Live and become is a movie about detachment and engagement, one which is equally mind-blowing and harshly unsettling. It takes viewers out of the comfort of their own living-rooms to an unfamiliar and eccentric ground which exposes each and every one of us to the injustices, inequalities and differences that we often choose to ignore. It is an open invitation to cosmopolitanism and realism, one we would be unreasonable to disregard.

I highly recommend this movie.
Movie rated 10/10

Live and Become trailer:

Angelique Kidjo taking a crowd bath, Chicago, Il, March 4th

Angelique Kidjo is one of my favorite African singer along with Salif Keita and Cesaria Evora. Of those who are no longer among us, I also love Miriam Makeba, Lucky Dube and Brenda Fassie. Last night, Angelique Kidjo had a concert in Chicago and I obviously went to the performance. The ticket was 30 dollars and it was worth every single cent. Mrs. Kidjo gave an unforgettable performance. She was energetic, sang like an angel and danced like a real professional dancer. She had the rhythm, the attitude and made use of her impressive wisdom to charm us all. Those of you who are interested in Africa and live in America should do your best to attend one of her shows. She’s on a spring tour which continues in some of the major American cities. You can find her concert schedule at the end of this post.

In two hours, Mrs. Kidjo did not only surprise us with her beautiful voice but also with her life lessons. In between songs, she argued that racism is a waste of energy; that educating women in Africa is crucial for educating African nations; that countries cannot develop without women empowerment; and that African men should lead by example, just like her father did. She also mentioned that African Americans are an integral part of African culture.   Mrs. Kidjo did not forget to pay tribute to Miriam Makeba which she called a symbol of African culture. See her live performance of Malaika below:

Angelique Kidjo also confessed that she enjoys Bollywood movies. She likes them so much that she went to India to find a song that’s been on her mind for decades. She eventually found it and then made her own Hindi song. See her stunning performance and find out why she likes Indian movies, below:

Don’t you simply love the way she dances??? I certainly do.

Towards the end of her performance, she invited some of the members of the audience on stage who had a great time singing and dancing with her. Below, you will see just how much fun you will have if you go to her next show. Mrs. Kidjo is singing her famous song: Agora.

Angelique Kidjo singing Afrika, Chicago, Il, March 4th 2010

Angélique Kidjo was born on 14 July 1960 in Ouidah, a small town on the coast of Benin. She went to school in Paris before she emigrated to the United Stated. She has a 16 year old daughter. What struck most about her was that she is in fact a very articulated feminist. She is brilliant, entertaining and has an overwhelming voice.

Mrs Kidjo is famous for songs like Aye, Congoleo, Wombo Lombo, Afrika, Agolo or Wele Wele.

Her new album, Oyo, will be released next month. It features guest appearances by Dianne Reeves, John Legend or Roy Hargrove.

The upcoming concerts will take place in the following cities and at the following locations. If you have the chance, go and see this wonderful artist. I guarantee she will convince you that life is indeed beautiful and that we have a duty to live it with dignity and modesty.

Mar 05 Miami, Fladrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts

Mar 26New York, NY The Town Hall

Mar 27 Washington, DC Lisner Auditorium

Mar 28 Wilmington, DE Grand Opera House

Apr 01 Troy, NY Troy Music Hall

Apr 02 Somerville, MA Somerville Theatre

Apr 03 Somerville , MA Somerville Theatre Apr 16

Cully, Switzerland Cully Jazz Festival

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Photo Credit: ehow.com

The action happens in 1976, in Soweto, supposedly before the infamous uprisings.  I know that, simply because there’s no mention of the massacres. Overall the movie lacks any contextualization of the struggle for freedom and dramatic events are interrupted by dance numbers which means you’re never sure of what is really happening.

Sarafina is a young girl who secretly cherishes a picture of Nelson Mandela. She wants him free and comes to realize that disobedience is her last weapon. She becomes more radical when a boy she likes is brutally murdered by the white cops. Her only source of inspiration is her teacher Mary, with whom she shares her frustration and dreams for a better future. Mary is not in piece with herself either. She is in love with a hardcore militant who asks her to hide a gun just before he is incarcerated. Things get more complicated and confusing when the machinegun is eventually passed on to Serafina. What this subplot is supposed to mean remains a mystery.

Perhaps the most critical scenes in the movie are the ones in which brutal acts of violence are committed: when the young boy is killed for no apparent reason, when the “bad African” working for the whites is set on fire, when Sarafina is tortured and so on. Whether the violence is really necessary remains unexplored. The apartheid as a historical era shows that violence was necessary in order to weaken the white regime. The movie doesn’t really make that point. Instead, we get more dancing and singing which feels like a slap of my face.

In a wealthy Afrikaner neighborhood of Johannesburg we meet Sarafina’s mother played with astounding grace by South African legend Miriam Makeba. Sarafina visits her after a traumatizing moment in her life. She doesn’t know what to say or to express how much she appreciates her mother. To me, the movie reaches the maximum intensity when we hear the following dramatic rhetorical question: “Mama is good with children. Only her children don’t live here, do they?” Another scene which really makes a valuable point features Sarafina saying: “And if I don’t live to see the day, you better believe it. This is my home and I am home to stay!” If only the director spent more time on showing the injustices of apartheid in such terms, maybe we would have gotten more value out of Sarafina.

I personally also like the moments when Sarafina feels she is surrounded by traitors. There is no one she can trusts as government puppets and informants are everywhere. When she is paranoid and doesn’t know who to trust. It makes me think of my native country of Romania, and my parents who lived through similar times.  I also enjoyed the scenes in which Whoopi Goldberg acts as a history teacher who teaches the African side of the story. Her patience and non-violent approach are rather inspirational. I wish I could say the same about her South African accent which sounds more like the one I hear on the South Side of Chicago than the ones in Soweto. Which I am also familiar with, hence my ability to compare the two.

The movie oversimplifies this apartheid and that only suggests that the director did not know how to explore those uncertain times. We kind of understand that the movie is about Sarafina’s dramatic formation as a young activist who is discovering her political consciousness, but who can be sure of anything in a movie like this?

Mbongeni Ngema and Hugh Masekela do a fantastic job at composing the songs and the music performed in this musical and perhaps it is worth watching Sarafina at least to admire their work.

Directors interested in apartheid, FYI: The next time you want to make a movie about those regrettable years in South Africa’s history, you better know what you want to say first.

Whoopi Goldberg once said: “I went to Africa. I’m an American.” It really seems that this movie took the same perspective on apartheid.

I rate this movie 5/10.

I couldn’t find a movie trailer, but I think you will enjoy the following song just as much. It’s called: Freedom is coming tomorrow which perhaps would have been a much more fit title for the movie:

The recent SDP congress was one full of contradictions. Let personal vendettas and political shenanigans aside, this event was used to mark a new episode in the “witchcraft of politics” or the “politics of witchcraft” phenomenon which is slowly showing its mantra in Romania. This is an excerpt from a translated version of an email I received from an old friend who participated at the congress:

“After more than an hour of staying in line, I finally entered Romexpo. The first thing that struck me was not the red ties and red banners so reminiscent of a cursed era in Romania’s history, but the group of witches practicing what they call white magic. They were all there – maybe five of them or so – reciting incantations and exorcising the purple flame curse from the building. I thought to myself: what the fuck is this? I have never met witches in real-life and I have to admit I was a little bit taken by surprise. And I felt rather disturbed by the whole episode.”

Who were these withes? What were they doing there? Who brought them there? I am still a little bit unclear on the details as the reports coming from Romanian media are also rather incoherent. This is what I was able to find out.

1. The witches claimed they came to the congress in order to make sure that the event will happen “quietly and happily.”
2. They marketed themselves as famous and reputable witches with great power to stop esoteric forces.
3. They were wearing little crosses and other Christian symbols and had flowers, baskets and candles on them.
4. They were present at the venue of the congress in the early morning and then returned in the evening when the voting session begun.
5. They claimed they knew who will win and gave Geoana as winner. “Shockingly” they were wrong.
6. They did not mention who invited them to the congress but since they were inside before my friend arrived there, they definitely had the clearance to enter the building.

Who brought them there and why is less relevant. I’m going to go ahead and assume that it was Geoana and Hrebenciuc’s teams and if I will be proven wrong, I will admit it here on my blog.

I am going to translate what they had to say at the congress when journalists asked them what they were doing at Romexpo.

The Purple flame exists inside the building, people in purple got inside. It could have been really bad, but with our power we managed to stop them. We entered the building and we neutralized the fights.

We have bigger powers which are required to stop these forces. In there, you find older witches who will begin some rituals. The purple flame is black magic and it’s inside the SDP but we, with the white magic, will stop the purple flame.

As you can see, we are not random witches, we are famous in Romania and in Bucharest, we use the white magic not the black magic in our work.

Now you make whatever you want to make of this. I have seen various journalists dismissing this phenomenon, but I think it is rather important to look into the connection between Romanian politics and witchcraft rituals. They might actually tell us more than politicians themselves. My view is that these witches are indicative of the deep anxieties that various politicians feel as they are losing their grip on power. I think they are trying to tame an invisible monster – which could be fate, historical irony or simply a historical accident – that governs Romanian politics. In the process, they are looking for explanations, solutions and new way of acting upon the world. I wonder if they actually found them.

Photo Credit: www.apropo.ro

“I have complex feelings about Eastwood and his libertarian politics: for me, he has never understood social processes, and works with lone, heroic figures that must triumph despite society and law. So I felt sure that he would scant the complex historical forces at play in Mandela’s historical role, and in the South African transition. Resorting to the game and the world cup was then a simple formulaic device to reduce these complexities, and also the challenges of nation-building under postcolonial conditions.”

Invictus was only the second movie directed by Eastwood that I’ve seen, after Million Dollar Baby. Recently, I watched an older Africa-related movie made by Eastwood, called White Hunter, Black Hurt. And now I accurately understand what my acquaintance meant.

Eastwood plays the flamboyant and historical character of director John Huston, the famous filmmaker and screenwriter who made African Queen, one of the earliest movies about Africa. Called John Wilson here, Huston has two obsessions: he wants to make a wonderful movie and kill an elephant. Why killing an elephant? Because it’s a sin he wants to commit. White Hunter, Black Hurt, an adaptation of the novel with the same name, deconstructs these obsessions and tries to make sense of this extremely complex personality. To some extent, Eastwood is successful in his endeavor. The character he plays borders paranoia and shows a libertarian mantra so uncharacteristic of people of his time (the action happens in the early aftermath of the Second Word War).

Making a movie about the conflicts inside an artist is quite an appealing project. But what Eastwood, the director does, is exactly what the anthropologist quoted earlier said. He oversimplifies the realities of the time and portrays an eccentric man who fights against everyone for justice. Which ends up being a quite shortsighted perspective.

Wilson goes to Africa accompanied by his friend, Pete Verrill, an elegant Jewish young man whose main mission is to smile, entertain his older companion and keep him on track with his project.  When they reach Africa, Uganda to be more precise, they go to Lake Victoria hotel, a famous high class hotel owned by a white settler. One evening, the two have diner with a gorgeous young woman who Wilson fancies quite a lot. But it turns out that she’s anti-Semite which makes the old director snipe and dismiss her in a very brutal manner out of reverence for his younger friend. But immediately after that, a servant drops a tray and is mistreated by his white employee. That makes Wilson go after this guy as well. The character challenges the white owner to a fight and then tells Verrill: “we fought the preliminary for the kikes now we will fight the main event for the niggers.” Really? Is that Eastwood’s conception of an individual making the world a better place? Granted that his character admits he’s an intruder in Africa, do we really reduce racism and anti-Semitism to a snide dismissal over a glass of wine and a fistfight? Seriously…

See the scene for yourself right here:

This movie might have some interesting scenes but overall it’s way too verbose and, as I’ve been pointing out, it oversimplifies some of the issues it deals with, to the extent that it looks fake. On a different note, both Eastwood and Jeff Fahey (as Pete Verrill) play their characters quite honorably (my criticisms are related to the script and the vision of this movie, not the actors’ play). In addition, the limited glimpses of African life that we get are quite charming. Parts of the dialogue, especially between Wilson and his producer are hilarious. This suggests that there might be some value in watching White Hunter, Black Hurt after all.

The tragedy with Clint Eastwood and his character is that they both believe that small gestures can have a huge impact or that they mean a lot. They can, but not always.

This movie has a 90% rank on rottentomatoes.com which I find completely overrated.

I give this movie 4/10 as I ultimately considered watching it a waste of my time.

Movie trailer:

In the terrorized village, a mother prepared to give birth. She suddenly hears a voice from within: “Mother, give birth to me!” “A child who can speak from his mother’s womb can give birth to himself” comes the answer. And this is how Kirikou is born. The world he in born does not welcome him warmly. Most of the adult men have either died or been kidnapped. There is no water and the grass has dried up. The sorcerer put a spell on the village and most of the people gave up any hope that things will improve during their lifetime. But Kirikou is not about to give up that easily. Armed only with his intelligence and advantaged by his size – no one expects such a tiny person to be a worthy opponent – he embarks on a quest to change history. And he does so by persistently asking everyone “why is the sorceress so mean”.

Written and directed by Frenchman Michel Ocelot, this animated movie is a delightful experience for grown-ups and children alike. Kirikou and the Sorceress is inspired by a West African tale and is profoundly embedded within the local culture. There is always an explanation for witchcraft and instead of simply fighting against it, you need to first solve the puzzle – find the reason why things happen the way they do. After Kirikou saves some of the other children from a river who has a mind of his own, he brings water back to the village. Then he goes on the most dangerous mission, one that cost the lives of most of the warriors in the village: he wants to break the spell of the sorceress. But he needs to know why she causes so much harm in the first place because he thinks that is the key questions. He puts his cunning intelligence at play and evades Karaba’s spies in order to visit his grandfather. It turns out to be a good idea as the old wise man reveals to him that the sorceress is mean because her enemies stuck a poisoned thorn in her back. That raises deeper questions about the human nature: are we naturally good or bad or do we change based on circumstances and events?

Will Kirikou manage to save the village and restore the cosmic balance? You need to get the movie to find out.

What distinguished this movie from the other ones that are set in Africa is that Kirikou and the Sorceress actually has the word “authentic” written all over it. The animation is rather unsophisticated and the village is not by any means romanticized. In fact, those who have watched any movie made by famous Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène can perhaps notice where Michel Ocelot got inspired from. Famous Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour provides the beautiful and original soundtrack for this wonderful movie, giving it an additional sense of space and authenticity. In addition, all actors dubbing the animated movie have an accent which makes more accurate as for most Africans English is the second language (mind you that the original version was in fact in French). Another thing to be noticed is the informed use of vivid colors in the film-making process and the astute choice of local decorative objects – statues, ornaments, and clothes – all of which can appeal to both an African and a Western audience.

Lastly, what mattered most to me was the fact that Kirikou and the Sorceress actually caters for all audiences. I watched it with the boys I babysit for in Chicago and we all loved it. They liked it because it was entertaining and because they found it fascinating that someone even smaller than them can be so courageous and clever. I liked it because I finally watched a movie about Africa that I could simply enjoy for its artistic expression, the narrative and how the story unfolds. The fact that I got even more out of the movie was simply unexpected. And much appreciated.

I rate this movie 10/10 and I strongly recommend you buy the DVD.

Quote from Chicago Tribune 1999:

“In its 16-year history, the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival’s two juries – one comprising children, the other adults – had never given their top prized to the same film, until last year, when both juries honored Kirikou and the Sorceress, a beautifully animated first feature by French filmmaker Michel Ocelot about an African boy’s battle with an evil witch for the soul of his people. Filled with lessons about morality, bravery, selflessness and compassion, Kirikou and the Sorceress is top-shelf family entertainment.” - Chicago Tribune.

“New Situations Demand New Magic…”[1]

In Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande, E.E.  Evans Pritchard analyzes a society which is broadly characterized by unchanging traditions. However, various events that are out of the immediate control of the Azande occur.  When that happens, its subjects are forced to make qualitative and quantitative observations which redefine their position, the way they interact with each other and, ultimately, how they attempt to preserve their existing modes of understanding of in order to convey what are in fact radically changing conditions. This is an uneven process, not devoid of contradictions in which personal and communal anxieties play a defining role in the social space, in which the Azande operate as a community. At a first look, though admirable for its relative social cohesion, the world of the Azande appears to be strikingly different from the one we inhabit. After all, we have different social norms, priorities and ways of acting upon the world, not to mention the fact that we live in a very different historical moment. However, seen from a different perspective, while the history of the Azande is distinct from our own in the West, when we analyze the historical processes of socio-political and economic changes that both the Azande and the people in America experience we notice some  interesting similarities.  In this essay, I argue that by studying Evans Pritchard’s work on the Azande we can detect patterns of organizing behavior that can shed some light on how people from our own society, the America of the 21^st century, interpret and react to the unavoidable succession of events that out of our control. I also argue that by virtue of our similarities, the Azande and the Americans have similar ways of reacting to the unknown. Consequently, the story of the Azande could in fact inform and allow us to overcome some of the obstacles we in America are currently facing.

In the history of the Azande, the transition from a small-scale, autonomous form of organization to a larger, integrated social and political system was an event of great importance, as the Azande were forced to reevaluate their role and existence within a much larger project. Their unilateral focus on their own community required a major shift as they were no longer only related to their peers and community but to other actors and series of events which they could not fully control. Not only could they not control everything that was happening to them, but the Azande were also unable to stop the social transformation from taking place, though they were not in fact concerned with it. One then asks oneself, is that significantly different from what we experience in the United States, one century later? Aren’t traditional institutions also changing and we have no power to control or contain them? Do concepts of marriage and family have the same values and meanings that our community attributed to them only twenty years ago? Is the economy, a force and structure that we were once so confident in, enjoying the same consideration and faith now as it did four-five years ago? Something has changed even if the actors were the same and even if we pretend that it didn’t. The story of the Azande suggests that what changes is our ability to control the events and phenomena that we once thought we mastered and perhaps to some extent we did. In the process, we generate new explanations that allow us to regain control at least at a discursive level over what is happening to us.

We, as a community, just like the Azande, will not simply accept social change but try to tame it, control it or at least rationalize and explain it in the terms that we see fit. Let’s take the example of the American economy and see how our behavior changed in the past few years and ask a critical question: what is that change indicative of? The economy is an invisible force. We cannot point to its material origin but we can feel its effects. If the economy performs as expected, we, as a community, prosper. In recent times, due to the global economic climate, our lives have been negatively impacted by a series of economic shocks that have directly affected our existence. This is something the Azande have also experienced throughout history and the term used by Pritchard to explain the social phenomenon and the effects this force had on people is “witchcraft”. As it turns out, “witchcraft” might be to the Azande what “economy” is to us. From Adam Smith onwards, many economists, politicians and in general educated people look at the economy and think of the invisible hand, the force that guides the free market capitalism. Basically, Adam smith had this to say about the invisible hand:

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. [2]

Let’s look at a passage from Pritchard’s work and simply replace the word “witchcraft” with “economy” and “Azande” with “people living in America”. As we will notice, an apparently distinct world will become strangely familiar:

I had no difficulty in discovering what Azande think about witchcraft, nor in observing what they do to combat it. These ideas and actions are on the surface of their life and are accessible to anyone who lives for a few weeks in their homesteads. […] There is no need to question Azande about it, for information flows freely from recurrent situations in their social life, and one has only to watch and listen. […] [W]itchcraft was one of the first words I heard in Zanzeland, and I heard it uttered day by day throughout the months.[3]

For the Azande, witchcraft was and most likely still is a form of sociality, the means by which people interacted with each other. Today, the economy is on everyone’s mind and it expresses a series of anxieties that we all have with respect to our present and future. In addition, we also mention it on a daily basis and we are worried about its implications and course of action. But most importantly, the economy, just like witchcraft, is fairly consistent with human responsibility.[4] In America, we have not simply blamed the economy for our personal misfortunes. Before reaching the point in which we attributed our bad luck and economic hardships to the economic climate, we took the conventional path so familiar to the Azande. We tried to live our lives, carry on with our economic exchanges and we did, in fact, followed and implemented the same techniques that we successfully used before the economic crisis. When those failed we attributed our hardships to the economy. Is that in any ways different from the Zande’s attempt to use witchcraft as a way of explaining “why bad things happened to good people?” Are we not trying to negotiate our differences and our sudden and unexpected change in our social and economic lives by attributing what is happening to us to an external force on which we have absolutely no control but which we are forced to acknowledge and respect?

The story of the Azande is not only indicative of our relation to the economy but also of an even more critical aspect in our lives. In writing Witchcraft, Oracles, And Magic Among the Azande, Pritchard was concerned with what he wittingly identified as a paradox: how is it possible that people who are clearly intelligent, rational and pragmatic often resort to ideas and beliefs that fail any empirical test? Pritchard goes ahead and settles this paradox by arguing that the Azande use witchcraft as a defense mechanism. Witchcraft allows them to not only explain unfortunate events in their lives but also protect their core beliefs from being rejected. In practice, the Azande rule out events that threaten or undermine their fundamental beliefs about the world they inhabit. [5] That is precisely what we, in the United States, do when we think of the effects of the economic crisis and the rogue global economic trends. By attributing our misfortunes to external factors – the economy, the careless bankers, the aggressive investment bankers and consultants etc – we rule out the other possibility which could potentially contest our most basic beliefs. China, an authoritarian state, managed to avoid the economic crisis until very recently and they are most likely going to get out of the economic recession ahead of us but under no circumstances will we ever consider being a part of a tyrannical state. South Africa, another protectionist state has also limited the negative effects on their economy by allowing the state to play a very prominent role in the economy. We wouldn’t and perhaps we shouldn’t consider that alternative either. But this shows a clear pattern which should not go unnoticed. We blame the economy for what is happening to us because otherwise we might have to question sensitive issues that could affect the way we see the world. Put differently, if we didn’t have the economy to invoke as a cause of our misfortunes – this witchcraft of the West – what would we think of concepts so dear to us like democracy, neo-liberalism, trade or state deregulation? And if we were to question those concepts, wouldn’t the consequences be more detrimental to our well-being as a whole? In other words, isn’t it perhaps better to hold the economy responsible for our misfortunes than to question the most fundamental sets of rights and beliefs in our lives, which are so valuable and precious to us?

The last comparison between the two worlds that I would like to make here is related to our similarity in how and by what means we try to reconcile the cause and effect of the events that affect us directly. We all do that by resorting to an authority that is expected to mediate our differences and restore our well-being. The Azande empowered a witch-doctor with that mission. We, on the other hand, chose the state to fulfill that mission. According to E.E.Pritchard:

The Zande witch-doctor is both diviner and magician. As diviner he exposes witches; as magician he thwarts them. […] As a diviner he discovers the location of witchcraft, and as a leech he repairs its ravages.[6]

In America, we identified the economy as being the problem and we are seeking a remedy. Some argue that this remedy should come from the private sector, but many believe the state should play a role in it. Perhaps in a Zande context, this debate would be on whether the problem could be solved directly through consultation among various members of the community or if the mediation should be conducted by a higher authority. In the United States, we hope that the Obama administration will make the right choices that will put the economy back on track. Just like the Azande, we have reached a point in which we look up to the higher authority that we entrusted with our well-being, and we are waiting for the direly needed solution. And many of us hope that no matter what decisions the state will make, we will once again be allowed to prosper and go on with our lives.

The world of the Azande is as complicated and contradictory as ours is. Independent of the decisions people take and how they attempt to solve their problems, both Westerners and the Azande are trying to minimalize and limit the detrimental external effects that shape their social and personal lives as members of a given community. Arguably, there are many things that set the Americans and the Azande apart. In this essay I focused on the similarities between the two worlds, but this does imply that I do not acknowledge the differences and variations that differentiate us.

Both the Azande and the people living in this country have a similar way of acting upon the world when they feel that they are losing control over some of the events that influence their lives. Which is, in fact, why Pritchard’s astute observation that “new situations require new magic” still stands. In practice, we all tend to hang to our exiting beliefs and almost naturally denounce everything that challenges our predisposed assumptions about the world. In this process, both Azande and us develop a faith and trust in experts or oracles of one sort of another. When in trouble, the Azande resort to witchdoctors but we also did the same when we requested the beliefs of other types of “diviners” such as economists, professors, economic consultants, and so on. When these actors failed we blamed the professional segments that these “diviners” came from and the institutions they represented: banks, governments, consultancy firms. By doing so, what we tried to avoid most (and succeeded in doing so) was what makes the Azande so similar to the people living in America: we blamed individual events instead of questioning the system of beliefs (i.e. finance capital) that these actors represent.

Lastly, by studying the Azande, we can perhaps retain our hope for a better future. The Azande experienced structural transformations that threatened the very social fabric of their societies. They managed to overcome the extremely difficult obstacle in their lives, i.e. the transition from an enclosed society to a social cell that was part of a much larger political and economic project. In the 21^st century America, we are all researchers limited by our temporal orientation as subjects of the world we wish to study which clearly brings along a series of limitations and contradictions. However, by studying the Azande, we might just find the answers and the strength to overcome what is after all the most challenging obstacle in our recent times. And the fact that others have succeeded should at least allow us to hope that we will too.

[2] Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 2, Prometheus Books (December 1991) p. 487,

[3] E.E. Evans Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, And Magic Among the Azande, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976, p. 1

[4] Pritchard, p.30

[5] Professor Jean Comaroff makes this argument in a convocation speech titled “The Uses of “Ex-centricity”: Cool Reflections from Hot Places”

[6] E.E.Pritchard 66