Witchcraft in Africa?

Today, I got the chance to sit in a college lecture called "Africa Peoples and Cultures." The topic that they focused on was the theory that witchcraft is actually going on in Africa today. The Professor talked a lot about how parents in Angola accuse their children of being witches for the sole reason that they want to get rid of them, so they do not have to go more out of their way to get them more food. I related this to The Crucible in that so many people were accusing the children for dancing in the forest. More children were blamed than were in the forest that night but, like in Angola, we are left with the idea that one kid represents the entire children population in Salem, or today, in Africa.
A question that the Professor asked was, "Is there actually witchcraft in Angola?" There is an article that was published, as Mr. O'Connor already posted on the AIS blog, that was published in the New York Times this morning about this subject. In reality, the answer is of course, NO. A word that the Professor used, which I am not remembering at this moment, meant that the cause of accusing, and the professor said that is "taking something very abstract, like witchcraft, and making it seem like it is a tangible thing." You could walk away from the New York Times this morning thinking that there is a lot of witchcraft going on in Africa. This also happened in Salem during The Crucible. Witchcraft was basically a rumor that spread too quickly. It started out really abstract, then with time began to form into something more concrete and tangible.
This is the article from the paper. What do you think?