Witches in Africa

In the reading about Bantu Language, the idea of being scared of witch craft caught my eye.  I had always known about back in the middle ages what they thought about witches and how it was a huge deal to catch one.  I found out in africa that there were many types of witches.  On the good side, there were witch doctors who were frowned upon a little but were known for their healing powers.  On the bad side were people thought of to posses huge amounts of evil power.  In the Zulu and Bantu tribes, there were groups of people called witch smellers.  They would host large gatherings of their village in particular and form a circle.  The villagers would not interact while the witch smellers would start to hum low and stomp their feet.  Then they would find who had caused the witchcraft in their village by the pat on the victims back and he or she would be dragged off and beaten till death.  The witch smeller's symbol was a quagga (type of zebra) tail.  Now in modern days witch smellers are illegal.  Yet the witchcraft continues all over africa.  People with albinism are thought to contain large amounts of power.  Because of that, it wasn't unusual for a witches to cut off limbs of people with albinism for luck.  Children were often accused of witchcraft if they had mental illnesses.  Some were sent to wellness centers to get rid of their witchcraft ways or some were just abandoned.  There really is no solution to problems like these.  Could this continue into the future?  Most likely yes.  The idea of witchcraft is part of belief which can be main factors in some peoples lives.  If you take away people beliefs then their individual pyramids could tumble down.  And when individual pyramids fall down then society then has no base and collapses.