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Title: | The ANC's Dilemma: The Symbolic Politics of Three Witch-Hunts in the South African Lowveld, 1990-1995 |
Author: | Niehaus, Isak A. |
Year: | 1998 |
Periodical: | African Studies Review |
Volume: | 41 |
Issue: | 3 |
Period: | December |
Pages: | 93-118 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | political conflicts witchcraft criminal law Politics and Government Religion and Witchcraft |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/525355 |
Abstract: | This essay investigates the symbolic politics of three witch-hunts in South Africa during the 1990s. In the last years of apartheid young men, known as Comrades, assumed the forefront of political struggles. Comrades embarked upon witch-hunting campaigns to banish evil and misfortune, and thereby to attain legitimacy as a political movement. Since the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, a situation of pluralistic political structures emerged. As adults assumed positions of political leadership, the influence of the Comrades diminished. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Setlhare chiefdom of the South African lowveld, the author outlines the local impact of these changes, with specific reference to their implications for the management of witchcraft. He examines the symbolic politics of three episodes of witch-hunting in the chiefdom: the Green Valley witch-hunt of 1990, and the expulsion of witches from Arthur's Seat in 1993 and from Rooiboklaagte in 1994. The author concludes that the witch-hunts bear witness to an ever-widening schism between Comrades and ANC leaders. Comrades were the most prominent participants in all three anti-witchcraft movements. He sees this as a response to their marginalization in the new political context. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |