Witchcraft and the South African Bantustans: Evidence from Bushbuckridge

Abstract

ABSTRACT The press has, from time to time, reported on the occurrence of episodes of witchcraft-related violence in the northeast of South Africa. Social analysts often attribute witchcraft beliefs and accusations to the persistence of ‘traditional’ beliefs in the contemporary world. This article challenges such interpretations and asks whether it is possible to see witchcraft beliefs and accusations as a product of people's exposure to the South African system of Native Reserves and bantustans. Drawing on multi-temporal fieldwork in Bushbuckridge, a district of the South African lowveld, I endeavour to show how witchcraft beliefs have been structured by the historical processes of population relocation, the implementation of agricultural betterment schemes, labour migration, and by ideologies of cultural difference, that were central to the bantustan system. At the local level, I suggest that accusations have been fuelled by experiences of social confinement in ‘closed’ communities, relative deprivation and of competition for scarce resources.