What the Okahandja grave desecration says about 'money medicine'

A year after the gruesome murders of three young girls in Okahandja horrified Namibia, another disturbing claim has rekindled public interest.

Reports that unknown individuals allegedly burnt a snake on the grave of one of the victims have circulated widely, reviving debate and speculation about ritual practices, occult beliefs and so-called "money medicine".

Whether the incident ultimately proves to have any ritual significance remains to be determined by investigators, yet the reaction it has provoked raises a much bigger question that extends far beyond one cemetery.

In many African belief systems, graves, fire and snakes carry deep spiritual symbolism, although their meanings vary across cultures and traditions.

Graves are generally regarded as sacred places linking the living with their ancestors, while fire is sometimes associated with purification, the destruction of spiritual ties or the concealment of ritual activity.

Snakes, meanwhile, are interpreted by some communities as ancestral messengers or guardians, while others associate them with witchcraft or supernatural forces.

There is, however, no scientific evidence supporting these beliefs, and the presence of fire or a snake at a crime scene does not in itself indicate ritual or occult activity.

Such incidents remain matters for criminal investigation based on evidence rather than cultural interpretation.

The incident has nevertheless revived a longstanding debate about beliefs linking ritual practices to wealth, power and success that remain resilient despite the absence of scientific evidence.

Rapid economic change

Researchers say that the belief that ritual practices work has fuelled fear, violence, exploitation and, in some cases, murder.

Professor Peter Geschiere, whose 1997 book 'The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa' challenged the common assumption that education and modernisation would eventually eliminate occult beliefs, concluded after years of fieldwork in Cameroon that rapid economic change often strengthened such beliefs.

As societies modernise and wealth becomes increasingly unequal, people search for explanations for why some individuals suddenly become rich while others remain poor.

Witchcraft and occult power serve as cultural explanations for economic inequality rather than as evidence that supernatural forces produce wealth.

In South Africa, Professor Adam Ashforth of the University of Michigan, who spent years studying communities around Soweto before publishing 'Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy in South Africa' in 2005, found that many people interpreted illness, unemployment, failed businesses, family conflict and sudden prosperity through the lens of witchcraft.

The important point was not whether witchcraft could be proved scientifically. Rather, the belief itself shaped how people assigned blame and understood success.

One of the most widely cited studies was conducted by Professor Edward Miguel of the University of California, Berkeley.

Analysing data from rural Tanzania, Miguel found that periods of severe economic hardship, particularly droughts that devastated household incomes, were followed by sharp increases in accusations of witchcraft and killings of so-called 'witches'.

The research documented 3 072 killings of persons accused of witchcraft in Sukumaland between 1970 and 1988.

Professor Boris Gershman, whose 2015 study examined belief systems across 19 sub-Saharan African countries, found that strong belief in witchcraft is associated with lower levels of interpersonal trust, weaker social capital and reduced cooperation within communities.

Rather than generating prosperity, the beliefs were linked to behaviours that can undermine economic development.

Supernatural intervention

Anthropologist Isak Niehaus, whose work focused on South Africa's Lowveld, argued that accusations of witchcraft frequently emerge during periods of political change, inequality and social tension.

They become explanations for misfortune rather than evidence of supernatural intervention.

If ritual sacrifice genuinely created wealth, why do the world's most successful companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Toyota, Samsung, and Amazon, rely on entirely different principles?

Their growth has instead been attributed to sound leadership, innovation, access to capital, investment, operational efficiency, skilled employees, customer demand and the ability to adapt to changing markets.

There is also no evidence that some of Namibia's oldest and most successful companies – including Pupkewitz (1925), O&L (1919) and Woermann Brock & Co. (1894) – owe their success to so-called "money medicine" or ritual practices.

Cognitive psychologists Loren Chapman and Jean Chapman introduced the concept of illusory correlation in 1967 to describe the tendency to perceive a relationship between two events that are not actually connected.

Applied to beliefs about ritual wealth, the concept suggests that people may remember the rare occasion when someone appeared to prosper after consulting a traditional practitioner, while overlooking the many cases in which no such outcome occurred.

Africa's rich traditions of healing, ancestral practices and indigenous knowledge seem to be confused with claims that wealth can be built on blood or that ritual killings produce prosperity.