Mr Mahama Saaka, who is 36 years-old and teacher at Salaga T.I Ahmadiyya Senior High School, who recounted this, said he was yet to have a child and unfortunately his mother had to die this way without seeing his children.
He recounted this when the Ghana News Agency (GNA) visited the family of the murdered old woman at Salaga in the East Gonja Municipality of the Savannah Region to gauge their mood after the sad incident.

Madam Akua Mariama Denteh, 90 years-old, was on Thursday, July 23, beaten to death at Kafaba by some residents and a spiritualist, who accused her of witchcraft and behind certain strange happenings in the area including; limiting the progress of the town.

Madam Denteh had nine children, and three died leaving two males and four females, a number of them as teachers.

The spiritualist was brought to the town by some youth of the area to fish out alleged witches in the area, working against the progress of the town.
The spiritualist mentioned Madam Denteh as a witch, which she denied but her denial was not accepted and was subjected to beatings.

The incident was captured on video, and had since gone viral on social media.

The deceased has since been buried.

So far, the Police arrested Yenufunu Yahaya Seidu (V), a Chief at Kafaba, who had been granted police enquiry bail, and six others in connection with the incident.

The incident has attracted condemnation from civil society organisations, politicians, gender and human rights activists across the country.
GNA gathered that, when Madam Denteh was beaten and succumbed to the torture, the spiritualist identified 17 other women in the area as being witches and some of them were also subjected to beatings whilst others, who were connected to powerful people in the area, were spared from beatings.
Mr Saaka said “It had been my greatest desire to fulfil my mother’s wish but I’m shattered now, I don’t know what to do.”

He told the GNA that “Since the incident happened and I took my Mum to the morgue, I have not been myself, I’m sick internally, I can’t even cry. She wanted to see my children before she will pass. That is the promise she gave to me, but the unfortunate incident has crushed everything.”

He said “I don’t believe that my own community; they will do this thing. I’m very, very surprised because I grew up there. We are very sad. We don’t know what to do.”

He called for justice to be served “So that my Mum will be used as an example to protect all other elderly women.”

Mr Mahama Sallam, 60 year-old third child and surviving first son of the deceased, said what happened was unacceptable, attributing it to ignorance saying “We leave everything in the hands of God.”

GNA also visited the spot, where the old woman was beaten at Kafaba, and it was a compound of a house, whose owner had since fled the town.

The road from Salaga to Kafaba is in a deplorable state and it takes about an hour and a half to reach Kafaba from Salaga using a four-wheel vehicle.
There is no Police Post at Kafaba, which presupposes that unless a good Samaritan in the town intervenes, any unlawful act could be meted out to any citizen in the area.

Yenufunu Yahaya Seidu (V), a Chief at Kafaba, who was arrested and granted bail in connection with the incident, told the GNA at Kafaba that some youth of the area informed him of their decision to invite the spiritualist to fish out witches in the area to ensure the progress of the town.

He said lawless acts in the area could be prevented, if there was a police station in the area and appealed for one in the area to ensure law and order.

In one important way, what happened in the village gathering at which the old woman, Akua Denteh, was killed was very much like what happened on the street of Minneapolis when George Floyd was killed.

White policemen have been killing African-Americans in the United States for a long time, and so, shocking though the killing was, it wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon.

In much the same way, poor, lonely old women have been regularly branded witches and molested and sometimes killed in Ghana and so this was also not a new phenomenon.

The reactions to the two incidents have also been similar. There has been revulsion, there has been widespread condemnation and everybody who is anybody in the country has had something to say.

The refrain has been something like this should never happen again in our country.

But in very significant ways, what happened in the village gathering in Ghana is a more shocking thing. George Floyd was killed by a racist white policeman and that is what racist white policemen do.

Those who stood on the street in Minneapolis and watched the events unfold and recorded on their smartphones, tried to plead with Officer Derek Chauvin that George Floyd couldn’t breathe.

None of them tried to intervene because there were two other armed policemen standing ominously around the officer with his knee on George Floyd’s neck.

Despicable

With Akua Denteh, it was a community killing, the crowd that gathered participated in the murder, they chanted to encourage the lead executioner.

Let us not try to clothe our despicable incident in some high-falutin international language.

Let us be brutally frank here. It wasn’t just the villages of Kafaba who were acting out the macabre scene. I have seen on the front page of a national newspaper in this country, the photograph of a half-naked, elderly woman who looked disoriented to my eyes, and she was captioned as a witch who had been found in someone’s room and had fallen through a roof!

Nobody complained, nobody lodged a complaint with the National Media Commission (NMC).

We have all seen and heard so-called bishops and prophets who tell their congregations they are poor because of a witch in their home.

In this country, if you are female, poor and old, you are an immediate candidate to be labelled a witch.

It is not only in our villages and very rural parts that we see played out in everyday life this belief in witchcraft and labelling of old women as witches.

Under the cloak of culture and tradition, poor, old women are regularly called witches.

To be an old woman in this country is to be at risk, and there is no hiding place from any part of our society when it comes to those who would see you as a witch.

More than half the class of our brightest young people, medical students, say they believe in witchcraft, and I suspect a fair percentage of the medical doctors are also willing to see a witch in an old woman.

Priests believe in witchcraft, policemen believe in witchcraft, teachers believe in witchcraft, journalists believe in witchcraft, every time anyone is going through a difficult phase, witches are the reason.

Whereas if you had a Black American child you could train him to be extra careful when he is near a white policeman, there is no such identifiable source of danger to warn an old Ghanaian woman to avoid.

Your fellow women accuse you of being a witch with as much vigour and venom as the men, the young as much as old.

It is worth noting that in this video, the two persons whipping Akua Denteh are all female, the younger one, said to be the exorcist who stomps around while she whips a helpless, old woman, looks like she would have applied to be part of the firing squad in the days we used to execute people at the Teshie range.

This young woman is a sadist who has carved a niche for herself as a witch hunter. The claim in this sad story is that the townspeople were looking for someone to blame for the lack of rainfall in their area.

Indeed, when the witch hunter came into town, she had started with 18 women accused of being witches, and after an evening of torture, 17 of them admitted to being witches and being responsible for the lack of rainfall in the area this season.

Akua Denteh held out and insisted she wasn’t a witch and not responsible for the absence of rain in the town and that is how she ended up being tortured in the middle of the village.

So, witches are not only responsible for poverty, ill health, accidents and death in the family, they can stop the rain from falling as well.

Hunch

I have nothing to base my hunch on, but I suspect Akua Denteh is not 90 years old. She is said to be 90 years old because she has a shock of white hair on her head.

Every poor helpless woman, with grey hair is said to be 90 or 100 years old in this country. If she is 90, it would be easier to see her as dispensable and it would be justifiable to call her a witch.

I am 75 years old and if I hadn’t been dyeing my hair for the past 22 years, I would have white hair also. If I hadn’t been sent to school and become financially independent, I would, at the age of 75, be a helpless 90-year-old woman, labelled a witch and being publicly lynched.

But probably the part of the story that exposes our society, with its famed culture and tradition, is that her dead body was released to her family who have laid her to rest in the cemetery.

Her family, she had family. Some of them were probably in the watching crowd, or maybe had been among those who had put her up as a candidate for a witch.

We have to admit this was not a Kafaba, nor a Savannah region problem, it is a nationwide problem.

I know that there, but for the grace of God, it could have been me, Akua Ohene, and who knows if I might not yet end up like Akua Denteh. The shame is ours.

The arrest of the five people comes on the back of the Savannah Regional Police Command‘s arrest of the chief of Kafaba, Seidu Yahaya in Damango.

Reports indicate the suspects who were arrested at Salaga on Wednesday have been identified as residents who witnessed the lynching of madam Denteh.

They are currently at the Savanna Regional Police Headquarters assisting with investigations and are to help fish out prime suspects who have reportedly fled to Yeji.

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The suspects are one Sanje who is said to have hosted Hajia Filipina and a priestess who declared the deceased a witch.

The other suspects are one Aliu, a teacher, Bumaye, Ashley and Manafo.

The deceased, identified as Akua Denteh, was lynched at the instance of a soothsayer and her accomplices who were invited to Kafaba to identify witches.

Latest information emanating from Kafaba indicates that Madam Danteh was accused of being behind lack of rains in the area.

Speaking in the Savannah region on Monday during a tour of the area, President Akufo-Addo urged all and sundry to ensure such an act never recurs.

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He expressed optimism that the quick response of the Police will lead to the rapid administration of justice.

President Akufo-Addo further pledged to set up the Akua Denteh Foundation in her honour.