“Drinking the Hot Blood of Humans”: Witchcraft Confessions in a South African Pentecostal Church

Abstract

Giant cats flying to America and cities under the sea off Cape Town are part of a cascade of imagery brought forth in the confessions ofbom‐again witches. Now Christian, these exwitches confess stories of murder and bloodshed to packed audiences in townships in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces of South Africa. The confessions reveal occult realms in deep engagement with the particular experiences of young, poor, black women in South Africa. These confessions are performances of risky agency in a country in which acts of witchcraft are severely punished. This article explores the possible motivations of these young, disenfranchised women who take up witchcraft and Christianity as one way to negotiate conditions of extreme violence and dislocation in the sprawling urban townships.