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30 July 2010
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WITCHCRAFT IN SOUTH AFRICA – THE MEDIEVAL AND THE MODERN (PART 4 OF 4)
Introduction
In March 2005, a local community newspaper, Mopani News, reported that the previous month, in two villages just outside Giyani (North-East of Polokwane), over 100 youths had gone on the rampage, killing one person, injuring children and destroying 39 houses (they set them on fire).
Fifteen families were affected and among the houses destroyed were that of the village induna, the chief, a priest and a Mozambican traditional healer. The damage was estimated at over R200 000. Ninety people were arrested, 13 charged with public violence and arson, and 21 fled, avoiding police custody.
The reason for the destruction?
Two days before (on 18 February) three local soccer players had died in a car accident. The enraged mob – who labelled themselves ‘The Witch Hunters’ – identified the families and individuals above as responsible because, according to the mob, they had been practising witchcraft and had cast a spell on the vehicle transporting the players.
After that, revenge was inevitable.
Polokwane and its surrounds is no stranger to this sort of incident, and the Limpopo province – of which Polokwane is the capital - is the capital of witchcraft and witchcraft-related crimes in South Africa.
But this largely rural province and city, one of the poorer in South Africa, needs to be placed in a broader context: in a developing country aspiring to join the first world. Limpopo's poverty and underdevelopment stands in stark contrast to some of the other, richer and more urbanised provinces. And, in much the same way, witchcraft and witchcraft-related crimes stand in stark contrast to the aspirations and principles which underly South Africa's new democracy.
It is something of a remarkable paradox then, that in December this year, the ANC will convene in Polokwane for the party’s 52nd National Conference, during which it will elect a president, who – if it is not President Mbeki – will in all likelihood go on to become the president of the country in 2009.
Ignoring the detailed policy and debate – much of which will inform government policy and impact on the quality of South Africa’s democracy – the ruling party will elect a president, the ultimate test for any democratic institution.
And all this will be taking place within a province and city where people are accused of being witches, tortured, mutilated and burnt to death in the most horrific fashion.
In December, the medieval will meet the modern.
It’s a contrast which defines South Africa and, indeed, Africa, in many respects. And it’s a contradiction which, surprisingly, has drawn very little analysis or comment.
The medieval
The Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology carries the following entry under “Witches”:
“The scapegoats of late medieval Europe. A witch was commonly, though not always, believed to be a female who practises maleficium, the art of doing harm by occult means. In league with the Devil and associated with wild and desolate places, she was thought to turn into a vampire or bird, or possess the power of flight, so as to attend a coven of her fellows, where they fed on human flesh provided by one of their numbers. A delicacy was newly born babies.
Witches were not always hunted as heretics. Charlemagne had passed laws against witch hunts on the grounds that belief in the existence of witches represented pagan superstition. The position changed in the thirteenth century when the Inquisition was established to search out and extirpate heresy. In 1252, Pope Innocent IV allowed the use of torture in trials, an instrument the inquisitors used to versify the existence of witchcraft. In 1484 Pope Innocent VII issued the Bull Summis desiderantes affectibus which made witchcraft a heresy and gave the Inquisition large powers. The creaking structure of medieval society, badly damaged by th
| Posted on 21/5/2007
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