Malawi faces “ticking time bomb” as witchcraft killings and impunity rise

Across sub-Saharan Africa, the targeting of elderly people onaccusations of witchcraftconstitutes one of the continent’s most persistent and poorly monitored human rights crises. Tanzania, Zambia and Ghana have each confronted it in different ways, with limited success. In Malawi, the crisis is intensifying.

In the first four months of 2026, 11 elderly people were killed over witchcraft accusations, according to data compiled by theMalawi Network of Older Persons Organisations(Manepo). That figure is on track to exceed the 22 deaths recorded across the entirety of 2025. More than 300 elderly Malawians have been killed on witchcraft charges since 2015, Manepo executive director Andrew Kavala said this month.

His words were specific: “This is alarming.” What makes this a governance story, not merely a cultural one, is the gap between Malawi’s formal commitments and its institutional performance. The country passed a landmark Older Persons Act in May 2024. Its social protection grants remain unbudgeted.

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Its oversight body has not been constituted. And the colonial-eraWitchcraft Act of 1911, which has never been meaningfully enforced, is being considered for reform in a direction that human rights organisations warn could make conditions for the elderly significantly worse. Manepo’s annual data reveal a pattern that is not cyclical but structural.

Thirteen elderly people were killed in 2021, 15 in 2022 and 25 in 2023. In January 2024 alone, six elderly people were killed. Manepo documented a 68% rise in reported attacks and abuse of older people between 2020 and 2021.

The pattern is documented but largely unpunished. In March 2023, Manepo stated that none of the 72 witchcraft-related killings recorded over the two preceding years had been tried and concluded in court. One case illustrates the mechanics. In late December 2023, Eliza Supuni, a 78-year-old woman, was bludgeoned to death near the town of Mulanje in Malawi’s southern region.

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