WITCHCRAFT IN SOUTH AFRICA – THE HARD NUMBERS (PART 3 OF 4)
Introduction
In the two previous editions of this series we introduced the phenomena of witch killing and witchcraft-related crimes in South Africa, and highlighted both the extent and the gruesome and brutal nature of these sorts of acts.
Today we take a more objective look at the problem and set out the hard statistics, as provided by the department of safety and security.
Information, of any sort, concerning witchcraft-related crime is very hard to come by, not just with regard to the media (as we set out in part two), but also with regard to actual crime statistics. Indeed, getting the information out of the department was no easy task.
That said, when the information did arrive, it made for fascinating reading, and paints a picture of a country in which reported witchcraft-related crimes are both widespread and increasing.
The process
On 2 June 2006, the Democratic Alliance submitted the following written question to the minister of safety and security:
In each year since 1994, up to the latest date for which information is available, how many (a) reported crimes (b) arrests and (c) convictions, with regard to the crime of (i) instigating or calling for a witch sniffing ceremony and (ii) murdering a witch, have there been in respect of (aa) each province (bb) race (cc) gender and (dd) age?
On 19 June the minister responded by saying that the requested information could only be obtained by submitting an ad hoc request to the Information and Systems Management component of the South African Police Service (the police’s crime statistics database) and that, as this was a lengthy process - priority was understandably given to information requested for day-to-day police activities - there would be a delay.
On 11 October, the official reply arrived. The answer, which ran to 16 pages, came with a proviso:
“We cannot provide statistics on arrests. At times people are arrested one or more [sic], taken in for questioning and then released… Only provision for instigating or calling for a witch sniffing ceremony is made. If a so-called ‘witch’ is murdered, a murder docket will be opened.”
In other words, the police did not have separate statistics for ‘witch’ murders. If a ‘witch’ was killed, it was logged in the police’s statistical crime database as a murder – along with all other murders – and it was not possible to distinguish that particular type of murder from any other.
What the information did set out was a demographic breakdown of the number of reported witchcraft-related crimes (instigating a witch-sniffing ceremony) and convictions from 1994 to 2004.
And, from that information, it is certainly possible to provide a number of insights.
The legal position
Before setting out the numbers, it is worth setting out the legal situation.
Practising ‘witchcraft’ - in whatever form that may take - is not illegal. Section fifteen of Chapter two of constitution, the Bill of Rights, guarantees every South African citizen the right to “freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion”
However, there is national legislation that regulates witchcraft and sets out some conditions for its practice. The Witchcraft Suppression Act was first passed in 1957 and later amended in 1970, and again in 1997 (in which certain sections relating to convictions and sentences were substituted to effectively remove corporal punishment from the Act).
Effectively the Act, which runs to just two pages, makes it illegal for any person to label another person a witch or wizard; to claim or to pretend to have supernatural powers that can cause harm to others; to hire a ‘witch-finder’ to identify a ‘witch’; to profess a knowledge of witchcraft or to act on any advice from a ‘witch-finder’ which might harm another person suspected of being a ‘witch’.
The Act stipulates that any person found g
| Posted on 17/5/2007
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