The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Panic In Zanzibar: Nocturnal Sodomy & Demon-Bats The Legend of the Popobawa, the 1995 event and Swahili spirit-sex STONE AGE HERBALIST “In the first half of 1995 an extraordinary collective panic swept across the Zanzibar archipelago. It started on the island of Pemba and later spread from there to Unguja and Zanzibar town. Men, women and children described being assaulted by a shape-shifting spirit, Popobawa, and on the larger island reports were rife that adults of both sexes had been sodomised by this malevolent entity. In order to avert its nocturnal attacks many people resorted to spending the night huddled together in anxious groups outside of their homes. On both islands the panic produced incidents of collective violence, when strangers suspected of being manifestations of Popobawa were attacked, beaten, and in some cases killed by the angry mob. Government efforts to calm things down were largely ineffectual, not least because most Pembans and supporters of the oppositio