Street children increasingly mark the urban morphology in many African countries. Since street childhood predisposes children to many vulnerabilities, including human rights violations and social exclusion from schooling, it is imperative to understand its aetiology and help design social work responses. Witchcraft and bewitchment beliefs appear to be both a cause and an outcome of street childhood in Africa. However, there is a lack of research on developing supernatural reasoning central to the African worldview. To further understand the role of bewitchment and witchcraft beliefs in the aetiology of street childhood, the current study explores the nature and perceived effects of witchcraft beliefs among street children in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Qualitative data were collected using semistructured interviews with 14 street children and eight key informants. Participants were recruited using purposive sampling, and the data were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Several themes emerged from the data that link witchcraft beliefs to street childhood, often arising in the context of strained family relationships (especially step-parenting) and confirming prophecies by apostolic prophets. From a developmental perspective, it also appears that African children may
be socialised into making personal attribution biases in conflictual relational contexts. Thus, it partly elucidates the development of causal reasoning within a supernatural context. Future research should seek to clarify causal reasoning development for African children, particularly within the supernatural African worldview. The authors
recommend that social work responses, including prevention and intervention strategies for street childhood in African contexts, address bewitchment beliefs in family and community settings.
Keywords: street children, bewitchment, witchcraft, delinquency, orphans
Manuscript submitted to Journal of Human Rights and Social Work | Manuscript preparation was made possible with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the FAR-LeaF Project at the Future Africa University of Pretoria, South Africa.
