When a new school term opens, you expect to pay for a variety of items over and above the tuition fees. But nothing could have prepared the parents of a couple of rural schools for the "extraordinary item" on their latest fee note - a tidy sum of money to exorcise evil spirits that had been persecuting the pupils during the last term and were reported to be still hovering around the school compound.

Many people thought this was rubbish, judging from the number of irate callers to a local FM radio station that had thrown the subject open to the public for discussion. "It wasn't spirits that made the students sick, it was cholera! What the school needs is to maintain proper hygiene," said one caller. Another said it was asthma, while still others cited examination pressure. Only a few supported the idea of hiring an African medicine man, and a high-powered, expensive one from Tanzania at that, to rid the schools of evil spirits. Many parents just took their kids out of the haunted schools.

But does witchcraft, sorcery or juju as it is variously called, really work?

In a way, it does. Consider an engineering firm from Hungary that was building a road in Western Uganda in the early 1990s. At one particular section, the engineers were told that unless certain rituals were performed, the spirits would not allow them to continue. At first, the Hungarians scoffed at the idea of slitting animal's throats and having a fellow dressed in skins and colourful feathers perform strange dances while muttering incomprehensible incantations. But the local labourers were not ready to work until it was done. Work ground to a halt. The Hungarians relented and financed the rituals. After that, construction went ahead smoothly.

And what about the guerrilla Movement that fought a five-year bush war and became the government in 1986? Their top commanders later revealed they had to perform rituals among certain communities in order to get their young men to join the guerrilla ranks.

But the guerrillas were not the first to invoke supernatural powers in politics. Just after independence, nearly 40 years ago, top politicians were fond of spreading the myth that they had very powerful medicine women on their payroll. One president was said to have a ring that turned red if any poisoned food or drink was offered to him. With such rumours doing the rounds, potential plotters against the regime found it difficult to recruit co-conspirators, as the population lived in fear of the leaders' juju.

Many business people too, before embarking for the free port of Dubai, will first consult their "doctor," who gives them lucky charms so their business will prosper. Even criminals are known to seek protection from justice in medicine men's shrines.

Superstition is also used positively. Mourners will not join a funeral procession until the front tyres of the hearse have run over a half-dozen or so raw eggs cracked into the dirt; only then will they feel the journey is safe and accompany the bereaved in their hundreds to the burial grounds - sometimes hundreds of kilometres away!

Other major users of traditional medicine men's services are seeking charms to secure the love of the man they desire or the one they are already married to.

More often than not, the witchdoctor will give the woman "medicine" to hold in her mouth - without spitting or swallowing - when her husband starts a quarrel. With her mouth full of harmless water, the woman cannot talk back to the man, who eventually gives up his complaining and makes peace - whereupon the woman becomes a lifelong believer in the power of the juju.

So, the head teachers who are collecting funds to exorcise their schools of ghosts may not be fools after all. They probably just want to restore the confidence of the parents in their schools, buying time while the student illnesses are investigated and a cure found.