THE best pictures, they say, are on radio – but the picture painted in a BBC Radio 4 report this evening of a young boy having hot wax poured on his stomach, and being hit in the abdomen before having “holy water” poured on him, is one I wish I could get out of my head.
The child, undergoing an exorcism, was seen being abused by a BBC reporter in one of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s many revivalist and charismatic churches. These churches have become increasingly popular in the Congo as a result of offering magical and miraculous solutions to the misery and insecurity Congolese have faced for decades.
For several years these churches have also hit the headlines for making money by carrying out cruel exorcisms of children they brand as witches, and the streets of Kinshasa are filled with thousands of homeless kids who have been accused of being “possessed”.
Back in 2004 The New Humanist magazine reported:
On almost every street in Kinshasa there are small churches where preachers and pastors say that Satan and witches are the source of all ills. Congo has four main religious groupings: Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and the Kimbangists, who blend traditional African beliefs with Christian worship. It is mostly the newly emerging Protestant churches and the Kimbangists who advocate belief in witchcraft and identify children as witches.
The magazine also noted the antics of one those directly responsible for the suffering of youngsters – Prophet Onokoko:
Prophet Onokoko is one of many Christian ministers in Kinshasa offering to exorcise children. He prefers to purge children of demons by making them take laxatives and emetics. They are forced to swallow and later regurgitate foreign objects, which Onokoko then displays as proof of demonic possession. He told BBC investigators: “We had a girl here who vomited a large prawn. When it came out she was at peace.” Prophet Onokoko has over 200 children on his books that have either undergone or are awaiting exorcism.
Mahimbo Mdoe, a Save the Children representative in Kinshasa, told the BBC:
[In Onokoko's church] children are made to vomit up things that have been inserted into them unnaturally. Two eyewitnesses have told us of objects like bars of soap being inserted into the anuses of children. It all shows just how vulnerable children in Kinshasa are if they get thrown out of their families accused of being child witches.
Pastor Tsimba is another exorcist, who, in an interview with the BBC, claims to have carried out over 500 child exorcisms. He can tell they are possessed “by the shape of their eyes”.
But now, according to the BBC, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo is expected to vote shortly for new legislation that will make it a criminal offence to accuse a child of being a witch.
You can access a BBC World Service report on the Congo’s child witches here.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 am
Readers with kids might want to take a closer look at any ‘partnerships’ between schools in their area and in Africa.
On the face of it, these seem a good way to get kids to relate to their peers in ‘developing’ countries and so on, but I find they’re often church based and in local cases I’ve noticed a link between innocent sounding projects and dodgy evangelicals. In the worst case I once had to interview a barking mad pentecostalist (white and very Anglo-Saxon, by the way) who jets off to Nigeria from time to time to supplement his income ‘curing’ AIDS at mass rallies.