Louis Moyston

In passing the judgment in a recent court case in Montego Bay, St James, the judge suggested
Bible reading for a man found guilty of practising Obeah. I was amazed at the judgment and also the inclusion of the Christian religion in the making of the judgment.

The history of Obeah is interesting and instructive. It is important to understand the role of the law, the Church, and the police in the war against Obeah practitioners. There is a view that Obeah is pretence and the so-called practitioners should be charged for taking money under false pretence.

The earliest works on Obeah were done by planters who provided the intellectual basis for rules outlawing Obeah. This anti-Obeah resistance was continued by the Church and later the police.

History

The history of Obeah is deep and colourful. The slave world had two sets of people. To borrow from Niccolo Machiavelli’s
The Prince: the first set is characterised by a popular desire not to be oppressed and the second is characterised by the desire to command and oppress the other.

Prior to the 1760 Tacky Uprising, Obeah was popularly viewed in terms of “superstition” in the “feeble-minded” people. The Tacky Uprising’s connection to Obeah resulted in the whites ascribing everything extreme to Obeah. The “legislators themselves failed to realise that they were not dealing with witchcraft alone, but with a recrudescence of old religious spirits in a new and more dangerous guise”.

Obeah had now become the arch-enemy of the oppressors. The penalty for the use of Obeah in insurrection, or even just imagining the killing of a white person, was hanging or being sent into exile. The fear of the spiritual powers of Obeah and the Obeah man was extreme in both whites and slaves, and it quickly became the nemeses of Christianity.

Planter and Church

The issue of Obeah was popular among some of the 18th and 19th century writers in Jamaica, including planters and Assembly members. For example, Edward Long, 18th century politician and planter from Longville, Clarendon; William Beckford, a rich Jamaican planter; and Bryan Edwards offered their views on Obeah.

The earliest views on Obeah were penned by white elites and later by the Church. Writers of the 19th century offered a range of literary and historical studies on the topic. In was in the late 19th century that the Church sounded the alarm regarding Obeah and its immorality in Jamaica. Reverend Thomas Banbury, the rector of St Peter’s Church, Hope Bay, Portland, raised the issue of morality in 1894. He wrote that “Obeahism” is wicked, immoral, disgusting, and debasing and tends greatly “to the pulling down of the Church of Christ”.

According to another source, the Quakers (from America) saw Obeah as a “competing system of beliefs” and that the masses were deeply under the influence of “superstition” rather than the authority and power of the traditional Church. The Wesleyan Methodists charged also that this African-related “superstition” was the “religion of heathen barbarians. The Moravians shared those sentiments but added that money being spent on Obeah should have been put in the treasury of the Church.

The Police and Obeah

The Church, the newspaper, and police led the anti-Obeah resistance, and during that period a high number of Obeah practitioners were arrested, tried, and imprisoned.

In the late 19th century the war against Obeah was led by the upper ranks of the police force, prompted by the press. The development and enforcement of new laws gave rise to a most vigorous campaign against Obeah practitioners, especially in 1899 when 13 practitioners were arrested in the years when the laws were passed.

In Mandeville, Manchester, two policemen were assigned to prosecute “Obeah practitioners”. Throughout 1916 there was a very high level of arrests of Obeah men and Obeah women in that parish.

The worsening social and economic situation may have been the real cause for “crimes” of Obeah.

The newspaper, through its editorials and the facility for letters to the editor, conducted regular discussions on Obeah with ex-police officers. It was unearthed that it was a lucrative business and modern-day Obeah is associated with a lucrative business led by the “druggists”, educated men who spread Obeah among the illiterate and make money from the “oils” they sell.

However, after 161 years of the Obeah Laws, Obeah is not on the decline in Jamaica because of the ineffectiveness of the 1898 Obeah Act. But if there is difficulty charging the practitioners for that specific crime, why not indict them for taking money under false pretence.

The 20th century view

Over the centuries, the underground and secretive movement mutated into features grounded in witchcraft for money by new types of Obeah men and Obeah women pretending to be able to deliver spiritual services for good or evil.

There were very frequent newspaper reports in the 1930s of cases involving the arrest and trial of people charged for practising Obeah. Some cases resulted in people being fined, while others resulted in imprisonment.

There was an interesting case in 1933 in which a conviction for Obeah was quashed. Norman Manley represented a client who was charged for Obeah and made an appeal. Manley looked at the history of the idea of Obeah as a West African phenomenon. More importantly, he emphasised the use of the word “pretence”. He made the case under the appellation of Obeah men and Obeah women ‘pretending’ to be able to deliver ‘spiritual services’. Manley told the court that Obeah was a pretence and it did not exist. If it does not exist, then the client cannot be charged for practising “pretence”. He suggested that an appropriate charge would have been taking money under false pretence. The guilty verdict was overturned.

One would have thought that this case would have provided a sound basis on which to start the legal debate on removing the Obeah law from the books. In recent years calls have been made for its removal. One letter to the editor (
Jamaica Observer, February 2013) read, “The recent furore over pronouncements from some members of the Senate that the Obeah Act should be repealed has been a source of amusement, for such a move would grant legitimacy to spirits of mischief and their steward and further that black magic is the reason that our Haitian neighbours are ‘cursed’ to a life of poverty and suffering.”

Another writer described himself as “a Jamaican opposed to sin”. He wrote that as a Christian he was deeply disturbed regarding the call from the Senate to decriminalise Obeah. He states, “The
Bible tells us that God hates those practices, my stomach churned as I read letters supporting this ‘evil’ agenda”.

There is the need for public education on this issue. No one in this day and age should be arrested and charged for practising Obeah.

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