In America these days, it looks like we're returning to the days of witchcraft. In Africa, those days never left.
Zambia, a country of more than 20 million, just sent two men to prison for attempting to use witchcraft to assassinate their president.
From the Associated Press:
A judge in Zambia on Monday sentenced two men to two-year terms in prison with hard labor after they were convicted of plotting to kill the president using witchcraft.
The men, a Zambian and a Mozambican national, were convicted under a colonial-era witchcraft law last week.
Now before you laugh this all off as a ridiculous abuse of the law, I wanna show you something from last week about how witchcraft is becoming popular again in our society.
This was published last Monday:
And Charlie Kirk was dead on Wednesday. That doesn't mean the "Etsy witches" have power, but the fact that such things exist does mean this is a growing problem that reflects a deep spiritual sickness.
If you're going to cast hexes on your political foes because you think it will actually hurt them, Zambia thinks you should suffer real punishment too.
The court found that they had been in possession of charms, including a live chameleon, an animal tail and 12 bottles of concoctions and had intended to use them to put a spell on President Hakainde Hichilema with the intention of killing him.
Just your run of the mill, normal day for an African witch doctor.
Leonard Phiri, 43, and Jasten Candunde, 42, pleaded for leniency from the magistrate who sentenced them ...
Police said the men were arrested in a hotel room in the capital, Lusaka, last year after a cleaner reported hearing strange noises. They were found with a chameleon in a bottle and the other items.
The AP notes that this is not exactly fringe in Zambia.
While Christianity is the official religion, a poll shows that 79% of Zambians believe in witchcraft.
I'll leave you with another reminder of how witchcraft is making a resurgence these days:
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