Are Curses Real?

Most Zimbabweans have a strong and real fear of curses and evil spirits. Curses are believed to be the work of a person who wishes harm to come to a particular person.

The scary bit it is that it is believed that anyone can lay a curse on another person as long as they consult a competent witch-doctor.

When a person suddenly encounters misfortune like death, sickness, lose of wealth, unsuccessful dating life or failure to conceive blame is usually placed on a curse that would have jinxed the person.

The exact details of how exactly a person conjures a curse is only known by those who have actually done it. However it probably requires a lot of hate to actually do it . However curses have their own implications. For instance ngozi (avenging or angry spirit) is a complex retaliatory spirit which is associated with harm that was done by a person to someone or a family. Sometimes these curses are carried from generation to generation.

There are those who protect themselves from possible attack. Others will seek the protection of the Christian faith and pray. Others meet fire with fire and counter attack with a curse of their own and target anyone they suspect for attacking them.

From some research carried out we have found that

Ngozi is essentially a crime of shedding human blood, thereby depriving the family of the deceased of an important intangible asset (life). When this happens the spirit of the departed has the right to approach the offending person’s family for compensation. [Believers] say, the unrepentant perpetrators are the ones who, instead of owning up, turn around and shout that they are being pursued by an evil spirit which they call ngozi; ending up courting the help of diviners and prophets to exorcise “the demon”. This way the offended is often wrongly criminalised by those who owe him/her life or other tangible assets unfairly lost; how unfair! And when the wronged spirit gets angry and unleashes calamity after calamity onto the offending family by way of demanding atonement people cry foul.

Local wisdom states that if you see a nude person in the early hours of the morning looking rather disoriented they are probably a witch who flew into someone else’s traditional security system.