Access to land in difficult times: an ethnographic study of morally compromised strangers in northern Ghana

ABSTRACT This article is the outcome of my fieldwork among women accused of witchcraft who lived in accused women’s settlements in Dagbon, Mamprugu and Nanung in northern Ghana. These women, whom I describe in this article as “morally compromised strangers,” often fled their native villages to these settlements to begin life afresh without husbands and kinsmen. Their gender and morally compromised status coupled with their status as “strangers” often denied them access to land, a key natural resource which locals largely depended on for most of their livelihoods. Faced with the stain of witchcraft and deprivation, these accused women resorted to the local notion of songsim to access arable land. In this article, I explore how these vulnerable and compromised women negotiated access to land in the host communities through the local moral economy of songsim. I argue that access to land by these women could never be achieved through long stay or improved living conditions in the host communities; it was facilitated through participation in the local discourse of songsim.