Mgoneko: Magical Rape, Media Panic, and Gender-Based Violence

Abstract

It was Spring of 2006 and I was in Northern Malawi taking a break from my round of interviews. I had been invited to attend a conference for students being held by a Christian student organization in a town about an hour from my research site. I accepted the invitation and sat in the back of a large auditorium filled with hundreds of teenagers and the kind of energy you get only by pulling together so many youthful people. The students were asked to fill out slips of paper with questions or issues they wanted to voice and have answered. One of the organization’s leaders stood on stage with a microphone in hand ready to respond. Some of the questions related to religious perspectives on sexuality. One student wanted to know whether it was proper for women to wear trousers. “It depends,” replied the leader on stage, “on the cultural context.” Another student said that they were concerned about what had taken place in the Ekwendeni Girls Secondary School dormitories. According to media reports, the girls there had recently been attacked in their sleep by a witch or Satanist who through magic had sex with all of them. Was it possible that these girls could be infected with HIV by these magical, sexual predators? I sat with baited breath to hear how he would reassure the students. Instead the man told the student that it was unclear whether someone could be infected in this way. The reason, he said, is that when the young women wake in the morning they find some fluids there so perhaps, as we know HIV is spread through the exchange of fluids, there is some danger there. He moved on from that question after this equivocal response.