Why kinship societies kill their old

A resident at a “witch camp” in northern GhanaHere is the story of a murder.In northern Ghana, on the western bank of the Volta river, there is a village called Kafaba. There’s not much I can say about Kafaba that would make it seem special or remarkable in any real way: indeed there’s no real sense in which Kafaba is very different from the other villages nearby. Like the other villages around it, Kafaba is a farming community, populated by members of an ethnic group called the Gonja; and like the other villages around it, Kafaba is very poor.Our story starts in the summer of 2020. It was a difficult time for the people of Kafaba.The rains that year had been spasmodic and disappointing, heralding a bad harvest to come. So things were already uneasy. Then, in early July, Kafaba’s “youth shed”—a gathering place for the young people of the town, affiliated with the local branch of Ghana’s ruling party—burned down. One misfortune might be bad luck: but for the people of the town,…