When Witchcraft Fear Entered Seychelles Politics

Introduction

The case matters because it joined three powerful forces: longstanding Creole traditions concerning charms and harmful magic, colonial-era criminal law, and fierce party politics. It was not a proven satanic conspiracy, a recognised “cult”, or a clinical episode of mass hysteria. It is better understood as a criminal investigation that acquired the features of a moral and political panic: frightening symbols were treated as signs of an organised occult threat, rumours outran established evidence, and an opponent of the government became associated with allegations that were exceptionally damaging but ultimately unproven.

Why supernatural belief survived modernisation

Seychelles had no permanent indigenous population before European settlement. Its modern Creole society was formed through French and British colonialism, plantation agriculture, slavery, the movement of liberated Africans and later migration from Asia. The country’s cultural history therefore combines African, Malagasy, European and Asian influences rather than descending from a single pre-colonial island religion.[ifremer.fr]archimer.ifremer.frHistory of the Seychellesby RB Allen · 2022 · Cited by 4 — The archipelago's social, economic, and political history reflects its…

Christianity became dominant, particularly Roman Catholicism, but formal religious observance did not necessarily displace older ideas about divination, protective objects, curses or communication with spirits. A Library of Congress country study reported that people could consult local seers and obtain protective or harmful charms, while seeing no contradiction between such practices and church membership. This is useful historical evidence, although broad statements that “many Seychellois believe” should not be mistaken for reliable measurements of present-day belief.[countrystudies.us]countrystudies.usRELIGION… magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. It is common to consult a local seer–known as a bonhomme de bois or a bonne femme de bois–f…

Academic fieldwork offers a more complicated picture. Rather than describing a separate, organised occult religion, researchers discuss grigri as an ambiguous category encompassing stories, objects, services and suspicions associated with supernatural power. It may be spoken of as protection, healing, influence or harmful sorcery, depending on the situation. Anthropological research also suggests that it has often remained partly hidden: publicly disapproved of, privately discussed and repeatedly reshaped by modern commerce, imported books, media and transnational occult imagery.[ERA]era.ed.ac.ukOpen source on ed.ac.uk.

That ambiguity is crucial. A bottle of liquid, a stone, a written symbol or a carved object does not explain itself. It may be a religious object, a folk remedy, a theatrical prop, a commercial charm or evidence connected with another offence. Fear begins to spread when observers agree in advance that such objects reveal a secret and dangerous system.

The 2023 witchcraft case

The episode began after graves were reportedly disturbed on Mahé and two bodies were found to have been dug up. In September 2023, police detained a Tanzanian national at Seychelles International Airport. Local reporting said officers found wooden artefacts, stones, small bottles containing liquid and documents bearing unfamiliar symbols or language. Five Seychellois were also arrested during the initial investigation.[Seychelles News Agency]seychellesnewsagency.comOpen source on seychellesnewsagency.com.

The investigation then widened dramatically. On 29 September, police arrested Patrick Herminie at the headquarters of United Seychelles, searched his office and later released him. On 2 October, Herminie and seven other men appeared before the Magistrates’ Court. Collectively, the accused faced 53 charges involving possession of objects allegedly intended for witchcraft, conspiracy to employ supernatural means, procuring such services and seeking advice through witchcraft or other “superstitious” processes. Herminie faced one charge.[Seychelles Nation]nation.scSeychelles Nation Magistrates Court hears witchcraft case -Seychelles NationSeychelles Nation Magistrates Court hears witchcraft case -Seychelles Nation

The case became politically explosive because Herminie was not a marginal spiritual practitioner. He was a former speaker of the National Assembly, leader of the principal opposition party and a prospective presidential candidate. He denied involvement, said searches had found no incriminating objects or human remains in his office, and described the prosecution as political persecution designed to damage him before the election. These were his allegations, not findings established by a court.[nation.sc]nation.scSeychelles Nation Magistrates Court hears witchcraft case -Seychelles NationSeychelles Nation Magistrates Court hears witchcraft case -Seychelles Nation

The government and prosecutors, meanwhile, were dealing with conduct that could not simply be dismissed as folklore. The exhumation or disturbance of bodies, if proved, was a serious offence irrespective of anyone’s supernatural beliefs. The central evidential problem was whether the authorities could connect particular defendants to particular criminal acts, rather than merely associate them through objects, payments, acquaintance or suspicion.

How an investigation became a social scare

Several features made the affair unusually capable of generating fear.

Desecrated graves supplied a concrete horror. Stories about witchcraft often remain difficult to verify because their alleged effects are invisible. Disturbed bodies transformed an abstract fear into something physical, upsetting and newsworthy.

Unfamiliar objects encouraged imaginative interpretation. Liquids, carved items and symbolic documents were repeatedly described as witchcraft-related before their precise purpose had been tested publicly. Once an occult frame had been established, ordinary uncertainty could itself appear sinister.

The language of the charges sounded broader than ordinary criminal law. Expressions such as “non-natural”, “superstitious means” and “witchcraft advice” seemed to place supernatural causation inside a modern prosecution. That helped create the impression that the state was not merely investigating fraud, grave desecration or conspiracy, but officially adjudicating the reality of magic.

Partisan conflict amplified every development. Government supporters could read the case as evidence of a clandestine threat. Opposition supporters could see it as an attempt to use stigma and police power against a challenger. In either account, the accused became symbols in a larger political struggle.

These are characteristic mechanisms of a moral panic, although the term must be used carefully. A moral panic is not simply widespread foolishness. It occurs when a real or alleged danger is magnified into a threat to the moral order, identifiable people become “folk devils”, and institutions respond under pressure before the scale and nature of the danger are securely established. In Seychelles, the disturbing grave allegations provided a legitimate reason to investigate, but the leap from those events to an occult political conspiracy was never proven in court.

The colonial law behind the charges

The prosecution was possible because Seychelles retained criminal provisions framed in the language of witchcraft and superstition. A historical Commonwealth law survey described section 303 of the Seychelles Penal Code as treating witchcraft-related conduct as a form of false pretence. The provision covered pretending to use witchcraft or charms to deceive, frighten or injure another person, soliciting supernatural advice, and possessing objects intended for such purposes.[Library of Congress Digital Collections]tile.loc.govLibrary of Congress Digital Collections

Such laws were common across the former British Empire. They did not necessarily declare that supernatural powers were real. Their stated logic was often to suppress fraud, intimidation, harmful rituals or exploitation by people claiming occult abilities. Yet their wording created a persistent ambiguity. A court might believe it was punishing deception or coercion, while the public heard that somebody had been prosecuted “for witchcraft”.

This distinction matters because law can unintentionally strengthen the fear it seeks to control. When legislation classifies bottles, charms or consultations as witchcraft evidence, it gives official authority to a contested cultural label. It can also make it easier to prosecute a vaguely defined network of people rather than identify a conventional offence with a clear victim, action and chain of evidence.

The Seychelles case illustrates why reform is difficult. Removing archaic supernatural language need not mean tolerating fraud, poisoning, threats, grave desecration, abuse or conspiracy. Each can be addressed through laws based on demonstrable conduct. Conduct-based charges also reduce the danger that minority religious practices, folk healing or politically unpopular associations will be treated as criminal merely because outsiders find them strange.

Why the case weakened

The prosecution encountered a basic procedural problem: too many allegations against different defendants had been combined. In February 2024, the Magistrates’ Court ordered the charges to be separated. Shortly afterwards, prosecutors withdrew the original charges against seven defendants, including Herminie. The Tanzanian national remained accused of possessing objects intended for witchcraft, while new or revised proceedings were filed against him and two Seychellois men.[Seychelles Nation]nation.scOpen source on nation.sc.

The withdrawal did not establish that every event surrounding the cemetery investigation was invented. Nor did it prove Herminie’s accusation that the entire affair had been directed by his political opponents. It established something narrower and more important: prosecutors did not continue the witchcraft case against him and six others after the court required the allegations to be disentangled.

Herminie’s later political success further changed the episode’s meaning. In October 2025, he defeated incumbent president Wavel Ramkalawan in the presidential run-off with 52.7 per cent of the vote. State House now identifies him as President of Seychelles. His election does not resolve what motivated the earlier prosecution, but it demonstrates that the occult allegations did not permanently disqualify him in the eyes of voters.[reuters.com]reuters.comThis victory returns full control of the government to the United Seychelles party, which also regained its parliamentary majority in the…

The reversal is striking: a politician once publicly linked to an alleged witchcraft conspiracy became head of state two years later. It suggests either that many voters accepted his account of political victimisation, regarded the matter as insufficiently proven, or considered other national issues more important. The election result cannot tell us which explanation predominated.

What the evidence does not support

The Seychelles affair has sometimes been described using the vocabulary of satanism, cult activity or ritual conspiracy. The available public evidence does not justify those labels.

There is no demonstrated organisation with a named doctrine, membership structure, charismatic leader or system of communal control. There is therefore no sound basis for describing the defendants collectively as a “cult”. Nor is local grigri tradition simply another name for satanism. Satanic language imports a Christian demonological framework that may say more about the accuser’s fears than about the practices being described.

The case should not be called mass psychogenic illness either. That term refers to real physical symptoms spreading through a group without an identified toxic or infectious cause, often through anxiety, observation and expectation. No comparable cluster of fainting, illness or involuntary behaviour was central to the Seychelles prosecution.[PMC]pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govPMCMass psychogenic illness and the social networkPMCMass psychogenic illness and the social network

“Mass hysteria” is also too imprecise. There is little evidence that the whole population shared one delusion or descended into uncontrolled panic. What can be documented is narrower: an alarming criminal investigation, extensive supernatural framing, intense media attention and political claims that far exceeded what was eventually established against Herminie.

Folklore, fear and real harm

Treating supernatural belief with respect does not require accepting every accusation as fact. Nor does scepticism justify mocking those who fear curses or consult traditional practitioners. Beliefs can carry emotional, social and economic reality even when the mechanism claimed for them cannot be demonstrated.

The most serious harms usually arise around the belief:

Conversely, automatically dismissing every ritual object as meaningless can cause authorities to overlook poisoning, coercion, financial exploitation, abuse of remains or genuine threats. The responsible approach is neither credulity nor ridicule. It is to investigate verifiable actions while separating physical evidence from supernatural interpretation.

Why the episode remains important

The 2023–24 case condensed Seychelles’ colonial history, Creole folklore and modern party competition into one courtroom drama. It revealed how older categories survive inside contemporary institutions: a legal provision inherited from the colonial period could still transform ambiguous objects and private consultations into allegations carrying enormous public stigma.

It also shows why “witchcraft panic” is more accurate than “witch trial” in the classic European sense. There was no mass campaign of executions, no community-wide hunt and no judicial finding that magic had caused supernatural harm. Instead, there was a modern police investigation whose occult framing expanded rapidly, attached itself to a major political figure and then partly collapsed when prosecutors were required to present more clearly separated cases.

The lasting lesson is not that Seychelles is exceptionally superstitious. Comparable tensions between folk belief, criminal law and political power appear across many societies. What makes the Seychelles episode memorable is the sharpness of its reversal: frightening allegations entered public life with the authority of police and court proceedings, yet the most prominent accused was discharged and later elected president. That sequence is a powerful reminder that an accusation can shape public reality long before its evidence has survived judicial scrutiny.

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Endnotes

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Additional References

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