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The politicisation of Popobawa: changing explanations of a collective panic in Zanzibar
Abstract and Figures
One of the most remarkable features of recent Zanzibar history has been the occurrence of periodic episodes of collective panic associated with fear of a spiritual entity called Popobawa. The first and most widespread of the modern panics took place in 1995, spreading from Pemba to Unguja and across to the mainland coast. This was in the months before Tanzania's first multiparty elections, and many Zanzibaris, in particular opponents of the ruling party, settled on a political reading of Popobawa's rude intrusion into their lives. Subsequent panics have been similarly interpreted, and external observers have also been influenced by these politicised understandings of Popobawa. This paper examines the development of the 1995 panic, and shows that different local explanations for the crisis were put forward before the political interpretation came to the fore. But there is also evidence to suggest that political history and collective memory have played an important part in shaping the content of Popobawa narratives, and the paper concludes by highlighting this.
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... Within Africa, elements of GSEs are reminiscent of the 70 cases of popobawa that moved across the Zanzibar Archipelago between February and May 1995 (Walsh, 2009). Initial reported symptoms of popobawa included being awoken in sleep, being frozen and speechless and feeling pressure on the chest. ...
... However, reports of popobawa in Zanzibar deviated from sleep paralysis experiences as they included subjective experiences of sexual assault in both males and females. Affected communities attributed popobawa to mpopobawa -shape-shifting spirits -and individuals who were perceived to resemble mpopobawa were lynched (Walsh, 2009). Similar to GS, popobawa had a sudden onset in the general population, was acute but of brief duration, involved somatic sensations that could not be later verified, cut across gender and educational level, resulted in intense anxiety in its victims, moved from one geographic location to another and involved the direction of anger at scapegoats. ...
... The sociological theory of social tension has also been used to explain GSEs (Sackey, 1997). Walsh's (2009) account, while focused on popobawa, is influenced by social tension and MPI theories. We summarize these theories briefly to provide a context for understanding the scientific and alternative explanations offered in the African media. ...
Genital shrinking is a recurring phenomenon with about 180 reported cases in sub-Saharan Africa over the last two decades. Transcending national boundaries, it results in distress for victims, mob violence against accused perpetrators and mass panic which law enforcement agencies struggle to contain. This article examines mass media construction and framing of genital shrinking within a social representations theory framework. Our analysis suggests the following: (1) mass media reports are informed by lay and expert perspectives; (2) three stocks of knowledge are drawn on interchangeably, with culture constituting a core representation; (3) lay and expert perspectives overlap on cultural and common-sense explanations of genital shrinking; and (4) scientific explanations are limited to individual pathophysiology and psychopathology and do not inform public opinion. We consider the implications of understanding genital shrinking for improving mass media constructions and dissemination of information on 'socio-psychological epidemics' that may have scientific explanations.
... Relatively few examples of Popobawa oral discourse have been documented, and fewer published, and yet most of the scholarly claims about how Popobawa discourse functions are based on oral discourse (Parkin, 2004(Parkin, , 2006(Parkin, , 2007Walsh, 2005Walsh, , 2009. One would probably have to be lucky enough to be in the field during a Popobawa panic in order to record full-fledged oral narratives. ...
... Children who come under the bird's shadow subsequently become seriously ill, develop convulsions, and in many cases succumb to the illness and die. Although Parkin's and Walsh's informants emphasized Popobawa's wings and shadow (Parkin, 2004;Walsh, 2009), creating an intertextual link to accounts of the dege spirit, the Swahili-speakers I interviewed in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar Town about Popobawa told me that he is not actually bat-like, except in his ability to enter locked homes undetected. Instead, his defining feature is his extraordinarily large penis, a physical feature linked to his activity as a sodomizing rapist. ...
... People interpret diverse experiences and other peoples' accounts of these as manifestations of Popobawa, and they do this through talking to one another and developing shared narratives and the common tropes I examine here. Walsh (2009) links the increased references to sodomy in urban Popobawa talk (contrasted with rural Pemba where 'Jamila' collected Popobawa stories for him) to persistent rumors about the Zanzibar's first President Abeid Amani Karume's sexual prowess and his having been possessed by multiple popobawa: 'It was averred that he was endowed with a larger than average penis and that women who slept with him (there were rumoured to be many of them) would no longer desire other men' (pp. 28 -29). ...
Since the 1960s, Swahili-speakers on the coast of Tanzania have talked about attacks by Popobawa, a supernatural creature said to sodomize his victims. This article examines both narratives and metadiscourse about Popobawa. I examine two salient features of this contemporary legend: intertextuality and a narrative frame that obligates Popobawa victims to spread the legend. People use Popobawa discourse for both conservative and transgressive purposes, not only reflecting and spreading moral panics about deviant sexualities and the violation of gender norms but also creating opportunities for Swahili-speakers to violate those very norms.
... A nightmare figure that has received some publicity in recent decades is a powerful dwarf called the Popobawa (bat wing in Swahili) of Zanzibar in Tanzania (Nickell, 1996;Walsh, 2009). Although, as the name implies, the creature appears vaguely as a kind of humanoid bat, it does take on different forms and hence seems also to be a shape-shifter. ...
... There were several epidemics in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and again in 2006 sometimes, but not always, associated with times of stress. Interestingly, the 1995 epidemic occurred during Ramadan, a time of fasting, sleep loss, and, presumably, somewhat more reflection on things spiritual as well as during elections and during contentious relations with the mainland (e. g., Walsh, 2009). ...
Abstract
– A restraint-induced immobility traditionally known as animal hypnosis or tonic im
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mobility (TI) has been suggested as a model for the terrifying “waking nightmare” of sleep paralysis
(SP), on several occasions though no previous systematic review comparing the two phenomena
has been undertaken. Both include, as a central defining feature, a state of profound but reversible
general atonia. TI is potentiated by fear and by threat cues associated with predators. SP is associated
with transitions between waking and sleep, and almost universally accompanied by intense fear and
frequently by sensations of an evil threatening presence along with a variety of hallucinations con
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sistent with threat and assault. Numerous parallels between the two include behavioral, neurological,
hormonal, and general physiological features. Perhaps most intriguing are parallels between the phe
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nomenology of hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations during SP and environmental conditions
and events known to induce, potentiate, or exacerbate TI. The review concludes with two speculative
hypotheses of exaptation and cooption. First, it is argued that predator-avoidance mechanisms of
TI may be coopted for, and simulated in, REM states, appearing as dream imagery in conventional
nightmares and hypnagogic hallucinations in SP. Second, these REM experiences, in turn, may be
secondarily coopted as experiential sources for cultural beliefs in spirit beings and spirit worlds,
Eine zwangsinduzierte Lähmung, die traditionell als Totstellreflex oder to
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nische Immobilität (TI) bekannt ist wurde gelegentlich als Modell für die furchteinflößende alp
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traumartige Erfahrung der Schlafparalyse (SP) vorgeschlagen. Allerdings fehlte bislang ein systema
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tischer Vergleich der beiden Phänomene. Als zentrales definitorisches Merkmal beinhalten beide
einen Zustand hochgradiger, aber reversibler allgemeiner Atonie (Muskelerschlaffung). TI wird
verstärkt durch Furcht und Zeichen der Bedrohung, die mit den Raubtieren assoziiert werden. SP
308
James Allan Cheyne
ist verknüpft mit den Übergangsphasen von Wachen und Schlaf und fast immer begleitet von in
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tensiver Angst sowie häufig von Halluzinationen einer bedrohlichen Präsenz gemeinsam mit einer
Vielzahl von Empfindungen, die mit Bedrohung und Angriff verbunden sind. Zahlreiche Paralle
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len zwischen den beiden Phänomenen beinhalten verhaltensbezogene, neurologische, hormonelle
und generelle physiologische Merkmale. Vielleicht am faszinierendsten sind die Parallelen zwischen
der Phänomenologie von hypnagogen/hypnopompen Halluzinationen während der SP und den
Umweltbedingungen und Ereignissen, von denen man weiß, dass sie TI induzieren, potenzieren
oder verschärfen. Der Überblick schließt mit zwei spekulativen Hypothesen von Exaptation und
Kooption. Zum einen wird argumentiert, dass die Raubtiervermeidungsmechanismen der TI für
die REM-Schlafphasen kooptiert und simuliert sein könnten und als Traumbilder in konventionel
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len Albträumen und als hypnagoge Halluzinationen in SPs auftreten. Zum anderen könnten diese
REM-Schlaf-Erfahrungen im Gegenzug sekundär kooptiert werden als erfahrungsbasierte Quellen
für kulturabhängige Glaubensvorstellungen von spirituellen Wesen und Welten.
... Belief and practices around supernatural forces and witchcraft play a big role in contemporary Zanzibar, periodically causing collective panic due to spiritual assaults [42] and spirit possessions, but is also related to everyday life and illness [43]. This was reflected in different social representations of stroke mainly as being a 'natural' versus a 'social' condition, something also found elsewhere in SSA [44] including Tanzania [45]. ...
Timely and appropriate care reduces the risk of mortality and disability after stroke. Despite high stroke incidence, little is known about the specific barriers to accessing stroke care in Zanzibar, East Africa. The aim of this study was to investigate healthcare providers’ perspectives regarding the barriers to stroke care at the main referral hospital in Zanzibar. We used a phenomenological approach and conducted 14 individual semi-structured interviews with healthcare providers at Mnazi Mmoja Referral Hospital in Zanzibar. The interviews took place from April through September 2022. Thematic network analysis was applied to analyse and interpret the data. Three broad themes and eleven sub-themes were identified, relevant at specific stages in the patient’s care pathway from deciding to seek care over receiving acute stroke care in hospital to accessing post-stroke care. These themes include health system barriers (medical supplies and equipment; staff shortages; attitudes and teamwork; organization of services; health education); patient-level factors (health literacy; relational factors; worries and feeling hopeless; financial constraints); and cultural context (stroke as a spiritual malady; trust, mistrust and power). Some of the sub-themes of barriers were similar to findings from other studies in both high and low-resource settings, such as shortages of medical supplies, equipment and staff, and sub-optimal organization of care. Other sub-themes were unique findings to low-resource settings, such as Zanzibar, and included relational factors and patients’ perception of stroke as a spiritual malady. Interventions to improve stroke care should be informed by all these findings. Otherwise, focus only on removing barriers related to availability of stroke treatment in hospital may divert attention from significant cultural factors that affect health care seeking behaviour.
... Existe también una referencia a la percepción visual que no se había visto anteriormente, como ocurre en Zanzibar. Aquí se le reconoce como popobawa, que significa "ala de murciélago", por la sombra oscura que proyecta cuando ataca al durmiente (Walsh, 2001). Las demás culturas que se han encontrado lo conectan con espíritus y criaturas malignas, como ocurre en Egipto, Etiopía o Nigeria. ...
During this research, called Prototypes and archetypes of the representation of sleep paralysis: an approach from art, we analyzed, as its title indicates, the different artistic prototypes and archetypes that have emerged around a neurological sleep disorder known as sleep paralysis. This parasomnia takes place during the transition from sleep to wakefulness, responding to common symptoms that cause great suffering and fear to those afflicted by it, primarily through visual sensory hallucinations.
Due to the limited and scarce information on this sleep disorder in the field of artistic research, a medical approach has been followed in the first and second chapters, accompanied by a discussion of the relevant psychological aspects, which will enable a better understanding of the anthropological field that surrounds it. This allows us to enter in the third chapter, where the cultural evolution of this parasomnia in the anthropological context is investigated through the examination of the mythology surrounding the incubus and the succubus, both of which are figures that are frequently associated with sleep paralysis. Their respective interpretation and interiorization as real beings will provide, through the association of ideas and the collective imagination, different social behavioral values to people regarding their experience with sleep paralysis. In the fourth chapter, an exhaustive analysis of prototypes and archetypes arising from the artistic representation of sleep paralysis is presented, focusing on the study of the work The Nightmare (1781) by Henry Füssli. A categorization and methodological chronology of different works ranging from the 18th century to the present day is discovered, which allows us to understand and study their analogous corresponding representation in art. In the fifth chapter, it is provided a reflection On the artistic representation and interpretation of different concepts associated with sleep paralysis, such as identity, memory and the emotion of fear, which has forwarded our understanding of this sleep disorder. At the same time, a study specifically designed for this project involved the collection of testimonies of people who have experienced sleep paralysis, in order to study their visual patterns in hallucinations from their descriptions. In the sixth and last chapter, a new perspective on the representation of sleep paralysis is proposed through the creation of subjective visual works (based on the testimonies) using photographic techniques.
The methodology used to undertake this research involved the study and analysis of ancient medical and cultural treatises, such as the Persian manuscript Hidayat by Akhawayni Bohkari from the 10th century, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) by Reginald Scot, the story The Night-Mare (1664) by Isbrand Van Diermerbroeck, the essay An essay on the incubus, or nightmare (1753) by John Bond and The Nightmare (1931) by Ernest Jones, among others. In additioninterviews were taken from contemporary artists who currently represent sleep paralysis very similar and were assembled in a compendium. Furthermore, an analytical and statistical study was also carried out, based on interviews of people who have suffered from this sleep disorder accompanied by a collection of written testimonies submitted through a web page created specifically for this artistic study.
One of the main objectives was to develop a codified study of the myths and legends in different cultures and countries, and to understand their symbolic representation based on their popular imagery and the existing tradition in the category of the monstrous and the figure of the incubus in art. Specifically, we tracked the above mentioned work The Nightmare by Füssli, a work whose influence pertains to this day, being the most representative prototype and archetype of sleep paralysis. These research outputs will allow us to reflect on, to recreate and to question the existing representation of sleep paralysis in art until our days. The final objective is to approach the subjective representation of the experience of sleep paralysis, breaking with the prototype and archetype created over the years. To this end, new patterns of representation will be proposed through the author`s artistic creation based on the collected testimonies, in order to create a visual guide that serves as a means of understanding a society that has no prior experience with sleep paralysis.
As a final conclusion, the interdisciplinary nature of this research has allowed us to understand the mythology and beliefs associated with sleep paralysis, which enables the identification and designation of possible prototypes and archetypes in the artistic representation of this parasomnia, marked by a powerful collective imagination. The artistic work presented here has created novel prototypes and archetypes of sleep paralysis, which greatly advances our understanding of this experience. As it is shown, this work is considerably better understood when is accompanied by the description of testimonies, as it connects a communication code between the text and the image. Nevertheless, despite the fact that a new proposal for the representation of sleep paralysis in art is emerging, the timeless value of the representation of Füssli’s The Nightmare is confirmed here. With this study, and with the resulting artistic works, we are able to approximate the experience of this parasomnia to a public that was unaware of it, which also reveals how the imagination operates on a collective and personal level, since it is built on each individual with components that are inherited culturally and transmitted and expressed through art.
... The mainland origin of at least three of the victims made them even more vulnerable to suspicion. In 1995 Popobawa was seen by many people to be an external threat originating in one way or another from mainland Tanzania (for details see Walsh 2009). The suggestion in one account that the man in the mortuary at Mnazi Mmoja hospital had scars on his body like those of a Makonde may also be significant in this context. ...
On the night of Monday 3rd April 1995 a visitor from the Tanzanian mainland was killed by a frenzied mob in Zanzibar town. He was killed because he was thought to be one of a number of manifestations of Popobawa, an evil spirit which had terrorised the people of Pemba island for more than a month and was now rampaging through the densely populated capital of Zanzibar. This was the first killing of its kind during the Popobawa panic of 1995, and as we shall see it became the most notorious. But it was not the first instance of collective violence in those months, nor would it be the last that ended in the death of an innocent victim, supposed by the mob to be the nocturnal phantom in person.
In this paper, based on information collected during and after the events of 1995, and including both published and unpublished written accounts, I will first outline the little that is known about these incidents. In the second half of the paper I will discuss the reasons for the selection of particular victims and speculate on the underlying causes of this violence.
Very little is known about the communicative practices of men who transgress gender and sexual norms in East Africa, particularly along the Swahili Coast, where the majority of Swahili speakers are Sunni Muslims. In Zanzibar Town, Tanzania, the valorization of verbal discretion, the widespread belief that sodomy is a religious taboo, and the real risk of negative sanctions for transgressing sexual norms usually prevent open discussion of sexuality. Through discourse analysis of a conversation about Popobawa, a supernatural sodomist, with a man who transgresses Zanzibari gender norms, this essay examines how transgressive identities can be revealed in discreet ways while respecting Zanzibari discursive norms and discusses the difference between widely used Swahili terms for transgressive men (hanithi, basha, and shoga) and the newer borrowed term magays. Some of the communicative practices discussed are similar to secret “gay” languages in other contexts, but talk about spirits, and about Popobawa in particular, offers a unique way for transgressive men to respect local conversational norms while discreetly revealing their own identities and desires.
This article offers a review of published texts describing sexual relations between men in Tanzania in the period 1860-2010. It explores ways in which men who have sex with men have been named and understood; describes the sexual and social roles associated with differing same-sex identities and subjectivities; tracks politics, policies, and sociocultural expressions relating to sex between men; and explores the ways in which men's same-sex sexual practices have been responded to in the context of health and HIV. Among the impressions emerging from the historical record is that sex between men is not (and has not been) uncommon in Tanzania; that a significant conceptual distinction exists between men who are anally receptive and men who penetrate anally; and that there has been a range of views on, and opinions about, same-sex relations within the wider society. There is evidence that same-sex practicing men in Tanzania have been affected by HIV at least since 1982, with one seroprevalence study indicating that the burden of HIV among men who have sex with men was quite disproportionate as far back as 2007. However, while men who have sex with men have been defined as a "vulnerable population" with respect to HIV in national frameworks since 2003, this had not led to any significant amount of targeted HIV prevention work being reported by either local or international actors by 2010.
Recent collective initiaves show that Zanzibar is entering a new memory phase but the remembering of the past of the Revolution of 1964 reveals the emergence of strong tensions and contests.
Zanzibar, an island off the East African coast, with its Muslim and Swahili population, offers rich material for this study of identity, religion, and multiculturalism. This book focuses on the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town and the relationships created between humans and spirits; it provides a way to apprehend how society is constituted and conceived and, thus, discusses Zanzibari understandings of what it means to be human.
Spirit possession has often been represented as a device through which the deprived and the lowly claim attention, respect and material favours. This article accepts that this is so among the Digo of Kenya but argues that in adopting such bargaining positions, Digo women reinforce the social control system which keeps them subservient to men. Parallels are drawn between the role of the possessed among the Digo and similar roles in Western societies and it is suggested that wherever people are granted privileges and remissions on the basis of their inferiority they are granted them at a high price.
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Opening Paragraph
This article examines the role of spirit possession cults in the Swahili coastal area of Kenya and Tanzania, based on three years (1982–85) of doctoral dissertation research in seven field sites (including the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba). It provides a reassessment of the conventional theoretical viewpoint that such cults are peripheral to the wider society's value and socio-cultural structure, asserting that in this case they are, in fact, not only central to it but actually one of its most illuminating expressions.