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 Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa
Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted

Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa reconstructs the biography
of an ordinary South African, Jimmy Mohale. Born in 1964, Jimmy
came of age in rural South Africa during apartheid, then studied at
university and worked as a teacher during the anti-apartheid struggle.
In 2005, Jimmy died from an undiagnosed sickness, probably related
to AIDS. Jimmy gradually came to see the unanticipated misfortune he
experienced as a result of his father’s witchcraft and sought remedies
from diviners rather than from biomedical doctors. This study casts new
light on scholarly understandings of the connections between South
African politics, witchcraft, and the AIDS pandemic.

Isak Niehaus is currently Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology

at Brunel University. He is the author of Witchcraft, Power and Politics:
Exploring the Occult in the South African Lowveld (2001) and Magic!
AIDS Review 2009 (2010) with Fraser G. McNeill. He is a member
of the council of the Royal Anthropological Institute and has done
extensive fieldwork in South African rural areas.
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‘Over its career religion has probably disturbed men as much as it has
cheered them, forced them into a head-on, unblinking confrontation of
the fact that they are born to trouble as often as it enabled them to avoid
such a confrontation. . . .’
(Geertz 1973a: 103)
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 T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L A F R I C A N L I B R A RY
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General Editors
J. D. Y. P E E L , School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London
S U Z E T T E H E A L D , London School of Economics and Political Science
D E B O R A H J A M E S , London School of Economics and Political Science

The International African Library is a major monograph series from

the International African Institute and complements its quarterly
periodical Africa, the premier journal in the field of African studies.
Theoretically informed and culturally sensitive ethnographies and
studies of social relations ‘on the ground’ have long been central to the
Institute’s publications programme. The IAL includes works focused on
development, especially on the linkages between the local and national
levels of society; studies in the social and environmental sciences; and
historical studies with social, cultural, and interdisciplinary dimensions.

For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book.
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 Witchcraft and a Life in the
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New South Africa

Isak Niehaus
Brunel University
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

International African Institute, London

and

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 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,

Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107016286

C Isak Niehaus 2013

⃝

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2013

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Niehaus, Isak A. (Isak Arnold)
Witchcraft and a life in the new South Africa / Isak Niehaus.
p. cm. (The international African library ; 43)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-01628-6 (hardback)
1. Witchcraft – South Africa. 2. Mohale, Jimmy, 1964–2005.
3. South Africa – Social life and customs – 20th century. I. Title.
BF1584.S6N53 2012
133.4′ 30968–dc23 2011040991

ISBN 978-1-107-01628-6 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in
this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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Contents

List of Maps and Figures page ix

Notes on Currency xi
Central Characters xiii
Preface xvii

1. Introduction 1
2. Early Experiences, Initial Suspicions 27
3. Becoming a Man 49
4. ‘Then I Did Not Believe’ 79
5. ‘My Second Initiation’ 95
6. ‘I See Things Differently Now’ 120
7. Seeking Revenge 136
8. AIDS and Oedipus 158
9. (Re)constructing an Ideal Life 183
10. Last Words 202

Appendices 217
References 219
Index 235
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vii

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List of Maps and Figures

Maps
1 North-eastern South Africa page xxii
2 Bushbuckridge region, South Africa xxiii

Figures
2.1 Luckson Mohale’s descendants 31
2.2 Sketch map of the Mohale home, 1976 33
4.1 Deaths amongst Luckson Mohale’s cognates,
1970–2001 82
5.1 Sketch map of the Mashile home 105
5.2 Jimmy Mohale’s monthly earnings and deductions, 2004 114
8.1 The houses opposite Marashea’s tavern 162
9.1 Jimmy Mohale’s obituary, September 2005 192
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

ix

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Notes on Currency

Prices are expressed in pound sterling (£) until 1961, when the Union of
South Africa became a Republic, and in South African rand (R) there-
after. The exchange rate has fluctuated throughout the 1970s, 1980s,
and 1990s. In 2004 the exchange rate was approximately £ = R12.50
and US$1 = R7.00.
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

xi

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Central Characters

Jimmy Mohale. The biographical subject is a 41-year-old teacher

and occasional ethnographic research assistant. He holds B.Ed and BA
(Honours) degrees from the University of Limpopo. Jimmy is medium-
built and serious, though he has an excellent sense of humour.
Luckson Mohale. Jimmy’s father (71) is a retired truck driver with wide
experience working in different South African cities. Although excitable
and quickly angered, Luckson is usually an extroverted, warm, and
talkative person. Luckson is exceptionally neat, knowledgeable about pol-
itics and tradition, and fairly similar to Jimmy in appearance. He always
spoke to me in Afrikaans. We never discussed the topic of witchcraft.
Ngwa (née) Ngobeni (Selina Mohale). Jimmy’s mother (about 68) is
usually found selling fruit and vegetables at the Impalahoek market, near
her home. She is a fairly stout woman, who loves her seven children with
all her heart. Though emotional, she is soft-spoken, and renowned for
extreme kindness. She has begun to suffer from respiratory problems in
her old age.
Ngwa Usinga. Luckson Mohale’s second wife and Jimmy’s younger
mother (about 62). She is the mother of six children and has frequently
experienced tension and strife with her co-wife in the past.
Moses Mohale. Jimmy’s oldest sibling (49) is well-built, taller than
Jimmy, and closely resembles his father. Though not well educated,
Moses is decisive, somewhat intense, and serious. Like his father, he
usually works as a truck driver in Johannesburg.
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Ngwa Mohale ( Jessie Thobela) (46) is Jimmy’s only sister. Like her
mother, she works as a fruit and vegetable vendor. Jessie is soft-spoken
and introverted, and has given birth to eight children.
Peter Mohale (37), Jimmy’s brother, is a staunch member of the Zion
Christian Church. Twice married, he works in Johannesburg, and is very
seldom at home.

xiii

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 xiv Central Characters

Henry Mohale. Though Jimmy’s younger sibling (30), he is often

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treated as senior because he is named after his paternal grandfather.

Henry is highly intelligent and hard-working. He holds BA and MA
degrees in Information Studies, and works as a subject librarian at the
University of Limpopo. Though a father, Henry is single. Of all the
Mohale siblings, he was the least willing to believe that his father prac-
tised witchcraft.
Kagišo Mohale (27) is Jimmy’s youngest sibling. Though he wishes to
work as a policeman, Kagišo has been consistently unemployed since
leaving school. He is tall, slender, and athletic. He was one of the first to
suspect his father of witchcraft.
Kevin Mohale, Jimmy’s younger sibling, died in 1984, shortly after he
returned from initiation, at the tender age of thirteen. Though I never
met Kevin, his death shook the Mohale family, and memories of Kevin
were very much present in everyday discourse.
Ngwa Mashile (Lerato Mohale) (39) is Jimmy’s wife and mother of
his three children. She is considerably taller than Jimmy, and suffers from
asthma. A Zionist, she holds a PTC (primary teacher’s certificate) and
teaches in a local primary school. Though set in her ways, she is fairly
introverted and soft-spoken. Separated from Jimmy after consistent quar-
rels over money and extramarital affairs, she is a caring and conscientious
parent.
Kgopotšo Mohale (17), Thandi Mohale (15), and Katlego Mohale
(5) are Jimmy and Lerato’s children, who were attending school during
the time of the events written about in this biography.
Andrew Mohale (34) was Jimmy’s half-brother and one of the first to
accuse their father of witchcraft. He was unemployed, separated from
his wife, and renowned for smoking cannabis and for heavy drinking.
Andrew was said to have died of AIDS-related diseases during 2005.
Iris Maluleke. As Jimmy’s most important extramarital lover (27), she is
widely blamed for destroying his family. From a poverty-stricken family,
Iris is extremely attractive, and occasionally works as a hairdresser. She
is known as being very assertive.
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

Duduzile Thobela (12) and Rebecca Mohale (27) are Jimmy’s nieces.
As Jessie’s daughter, Duduzile was an industrious primary school pupil
who died from a mysterious respiratory condition. Rebecca, who was
Moses’s daughter, worked as a chef at a holiday resort. She died, probably
from AIDS-related diseases, in 2005. Relatives attributed their deaths to
witchcraft.

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 Central Characters xv

Ngwa Chiloane (Nana Mohale), Luckson’s mother, was also sus-

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pected of practising witchcraft. She lived in Luckson’s home, and, despite

her love for her son, was renowned for a quarrelsome nature and the
dislike she expressed towards members of the Shangaan-speaking com-
munity.
Patrick Monna (35) and Ace Ubisi (39) are Jimmy’s neighbours,
friends, and occasional drinking mates. Patrick is a single mineworker of
small stature, and Ace is a former security guard and first-division foot-
ball player. Ace works as a photographer and occasional ethnographic
research assistant. He is twice divorced and otherwise unemployed. Like
Jimmy, both men have an excellent sense of humour.
Ngwa Mohale (Doris Mosoma) (about 59 when she died in 1986),
Aaron Mohale (about 74), and ngwa Mohale (Basebele Mashile)
(about 65 when she died in 2001) are Luckson’s siblings. Doris was
accused of witchcraft and brutally executed by ANC Comrades in 1986.
Aaron and Basebele both accused Luckson of witchcraft, and of being
responsible for the multiple deaths in their families.
Isak (Sakkie) Niehaus (44), the author, a social anthropologist, has
been doing ethnographic fieldwork in Bushbuckridge since 1990. Of
Cape Afrikaans descent, he has taught at the Universities of Witwa-
tersrand and Pretoria in South Africa, and currently works at Brunel
University in the United Kingdom.
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Preface

In 1990 I first started doing ethnographic research in Impalahoek1 – a

village of the South African lowveld populated by approximately 20,000
Northern Sotho and Tsonga speakers. At the time Impalahoek seemed
to be on the brink of revolutionary change. Comrades (young political
activists associated with the African National Congress) had rendered
Lebowa – the Northern Sotho ‘Bantustan’ of apartheid South Africa –
effectively ungovernable. A few years previously, Comrades had accused
a number of elders of witchcraft and violently executed them. At the
time there were ongoing battles between the youth and an organisation
of adults called the Sofasonke (‘We Die Together’) Civic Union, which
had resulted in three brutal murders.
As a white anthropologist, I soon realised the need to hire research
assistants. I desperately required local helpers to steer me through the
minefield of tumultuous and tense political situations. My research was
also hampered by my poor command of the local languages – North-
ern Sotho and Tsonga. With this aim in mind I approached a teacher,
Macbeth Shai, but he was unable to help me because he coached soc-
cer each afternoon. Macbeth, a good judge of character, introduced me
to some of his colleagues whom he said would make able assistants. I
became great friends with many of those to whom he introduced me,
and with them I formed the most productive working relationships of my
professional career. I managed to complete 30 months of fieldwork that
formed the basis of a monograph on witchcraft and political processes,
and also a host of articles on topics such as dances, ethnicity, masculinity,
politics, sexuality, taboos, and violence.
Throughout my fieldwork I involved my assistants as co-researchers
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rather than as mere guides, interpreters, and research subjects. They

assisted me in identifying research problems, selecting informants, doing
participant observation, and also in interpreting information. The last
task often provoked fierce debates. Since I held full-time teaching posi-
tions throughout the period of my fieldwork, I could not secure prolonged

1 The name of this village and of all persons in this monograph are pseudonyms. Unless
otherwise specified all non-English terms are in Northern Sotho.

xvii

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 xviii Preface

research leave. Instead of the conventional year in the field, I became a

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migrant, oscillating between the cities where I taught during term time,
and Impalahoek, where I conducted research over vacations. Some of the
most important tasks of my assistants were noting the details and dates
of important events that happened in my absence.
I used several research assistants and sustained very different relation-
ships with each of them. Jimmy Mohale, a teacher who was 27 years old
in 1990, was one assistant whom I soon came to regard as my closest
colleague and friend. Whereas some of my other assistants were better
mentors and were more readily available for fieldwork, I tended to inter-
act more easily with Jimmy on a social level. Jimmy and I both loved
drinking beer, talking about history, cooking exotic dishes, and watch-
ing films. He regularly visited me at my homes in Johannesburg, Cape
Town, Durban, and Pretoria. In Cape Town, Jimmy and my mother drew
much attention when they scooped up ice-cold seawater in large plastic
Coca-Cola bottles at Bloubergstrand. The water was later to be used for
healing rituals in Impalahoek. As a fieldwork interlocutor, Jimmy increas-
ingly occupied the role of a coeval, much as Al Muhammed had during
Rabinow’s Moroccan fieldwork (Rabinow 1977). The end of apartheid
came in 1994, and friendships between white and black men were then
easier and more commonplace than they had been in the past.
In 2002, Jimmy abruptly ceased working with me. There was never
any overt argument between us, but I found it virtually impossible to
locate him in the afternoons after school, or even on weekends. On the
few occasions that I did meet him, he always offered some excuse. He
either desperately had to go somewhere, or urgently had to attend to
some family matter. I gained the impression that Jimmy purposefully
avoided me: that he was no longer prepared to work for the small daily
stipend I paid, or to continue assuming the subservient and stressful
position of being a research assistant, described so aptly by van Binsber-
gen (2003: 51–74). However, Jimmy’s kin and other friends told me a
different story. Far from being too proud to work as a research assistant,
they said that Jimmy was in a great predicament and was ashamed. He
had deserted his wife and three children for a much younger woman,
drank heavily, and became extremely short-tempered – even with the
best of friends. Moreover, I learnt from Jimmy’s brother that he now
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openly accused his own father of witchcraft, and that he had even gone
so far as to consult diviners to kill the old man with vengeance magic
(letšwa).
Perhaps Jimmy’s strategy of avoiding me was wise. Through time I had
become exceptionally fond of his children, was furious about what he
had done to them, and openly sympathized with his wife. I also respected
Jimmy’s father, who had always treated me very courteously and kindly.

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 Preface xix

Jimmy was correct to assume that, despite his earnest attempts to educate
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me about witchcraft, I did not share his beliefs about his father’s hidden
malevolence.
As my anger receded, I began to fear that I might lose a friendship
that still meant a great deal to me. I was therefore extremely happy, early
in 2004, when Jimmy approached me and two other friends, as we were
eating lunch and reading newspapers in my car, parked underneath the
shade of a large tree. Jimmy greeted us, joined in, and began talking to us
on the topic of local names that we were investigating at that time. A few
months later he accompanied me to Pretoria and spent a pleasant week
at my home. Jimmy now realised that I had already heard of his divorce
and of his assertions about his father’s witchcraft, but that I had not
learnt about their details. Believing that a little knowledge is a dangerous
thing, he vowed to tell me the full story of the events that had transpired
in his life. His telling took the form of a biographical narrative told
with enormous honesty and great narrative skill during the course of 21
sessions at my home in Pretoria, my small rondavel (round thatch-roofed
house) at the Wits Rural Facility,2 and at his home in Impalahoek.
On 11 June 2005, whilst we were still recording his biography, Jimmy
unexpectedly suffered a serious attack of pneumonia. To Jimmy it was
obvious that his sickness was the result of his father’s witchcraft, and he
consulted a range of diviners and Christian healers in his quest for a cure.
He only once consulted a general practitioner. I suspected that Jimmy’s
sickness might well be AIDS-related, pleaded with him that he go to
the hospital, and gave him money for this purpose. But Jimmy argued
that biomedical practitioners cannot cure witchcraft, and proceeded to
visit yet more diviners and Christian healers. His condition rapidly dete-
riorated, but he still defiantly refused biomedical treatment. I drove to
Bushbuckridge to see Jimmy on the first weekend of September 2005,
and was shocked to see how much weight he had lost and how shallow his
breathing had become. I asked Jimmy whether there was anything that I
could do for him. He suspected that I wanted to take him to the Nelspruit
Mediclinic, and commanded me not to become involved in managing his
sickness, but rather to complete his biography. On Friday 16 September,
Jimmy’s brother, Henry Mohale, phoned my office in Pretoria to tell me
that Jimmy had died in the Mankweng Hospital outside Polokwane, at
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

five o’clock the previous morning.

Even before then, I had realised that Jimmy’s experiences could offer
genuinely new insight into witchcraft beliefs in the contexts of South

2 The Wits Rural Facility is operated by the University of the Witwatersrand and is used
to accommodate researchers and to expose students to the realities of rural South Africa.
It is located a few kilometers outside Impalahoek.

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 xx Preface

Africa’s turbulent political transition from apartheid to democracy and

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the devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic. Witchcraft and a Life in the New

South Africa is my attempt to tell this story to a broader scholarly com-
munity. His tragic death and his insistence that I record his last struggles
added another crucial dimension to his biography.
Two very different influences have shaped the manner in which I wrote
this biography – namely those represented by Charles van Onselen and
by the late David Hammond-Tooke. I was extremely fortunate to work
at the same universities as Charles, and I learnt enormously from his
life stories of lesser known persons such as Nongoloza Mathebula, Kas
Maine, and Joseph Silver (van Onselen 1984, 1996, and 2007). The
doors of his office always stood open for me. As my former head of
department at the University of the Witwatersrand, David’s writings on
cosmology and symbolism in Southern Africa added a crucial dimension
to my understanding of historical processes and human experience. His
monograph, Boundaries and Belief: The Structure of a Sotho Worldview
(1981), was written especially for someone with my interests in mind. I
hope that my eclectic use of their analytical insights does justice to them.
Other colleagues have also been extremely helpful – sometimes in less
obvious ways. They include my numerous friends and research partici-
pants in Bushbuckridge, of whom I shall name only Kevin Mitchell, Eli-
azaar Mohlala, Sharon Pollard, and Eric Thobela; Nicolas Argenti, Harri
Englund, Deborah James, Stephanie Kitchen, Adam Kuper, Patrick
Pearson, and James Staples (in the United Kingdom, where I am based
at the moment); Mary Crewe, Rehana Ebrahim-Vally, Anthony Goed-
hals, Zendré Lategan, Fraser McNeill, Jimmy Pieterse, John Sharp,
Enos Sikhauli, and Natalie Swanepoel (in Pretoria); David Coplan,
Conny Mathebula, Jonathan Stadler, and Robert Thornton (across the
Jukskei River in Johannesburg); Susan Cook (Rustenburg); Leslie Bank
(East London); Sven Ouzman and Ilana Van Wyk (Cape Town); Jens
Andersson (Harare); Fred Golooba-Mutembi (Kampala); Nico Besnier
and Peter Geschiere (Amsterdam); Erik Bähre (Leiden); Giorgia Tresca
(Rome); Aleksandar Boskovic (Belgrade); Petr Skalnik (Prague); Don
Handelman ( Jerusalem); Adam Ashforth (Michigan); Graeme Reid, Hal
Scheffler, and Jan Simpson (New Haven); Peta Katz (Charlotte, North
Carolina); and Eirik Saethre (Hawaii). I especially wish to thank Flo-
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

rence Bernault (Wisconsin) for her support and guidance during the
final stages of preparing this manuscript.
The fieldwork upon which this study is based was partly financed
by extremely generous research grants by the Mellon Mentorship Pro-
gramme, administered by the University of Pretoria. Despite my rather
eccentric career choice, my parents, Anita and Hennie Niehaus, have
always encouraged me in pursuing my endeavours. My mother has often

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 Preface xxi

asked me ‘How is Jimmy doing these days?’ I hope this biography pro-
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vides an answer to some of her questions, at the same time as generating

empathy for his adversities, conundrums, and choices (right and wrong)
in social situations that were seldom of his own making.

Isak Niehaus
Uxbridge, Middlesex
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

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under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

Map 1. North-eastern South Africa

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Map 2. Bushbuckridge region, South Africa

under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

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 Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

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Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted

1 Introduction

South Africans experienced 2004 and 2005, the years when I collected
the bulk of information for this monograph, in very conflicted ways. A
decade earlier former white supremacists and black freedom fighters had
averted catastrophe by negotiating an end to racial conflict and establish-
ing one of the most progressive constitutions on earth. Nelson Mandela
had become the world’s pre-eminent symbol of reconciliation. The coun-
try’s constitution entrenched the right of freedom from discrimination
on grounds of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.
There was also growing confidence in South Africa’s political system.
The Independent Electoral Commission had supervised three success-
ful elections and on each occasion the ruling ANC (African National
Congress) had increased its majority. The international media touted
South Africa’s model of negotiation as a possible solution to seemingly
insoluble crises elsewhere – in Israel, Sri Lanka, and the Sudan.
Tangible signs of ‘development’ abounded. Between 1994 and 2004,
the country experienced sustained economic growth. The number of
employed grew from 9.5 to 11.1 million; black directors of public com-
panies increased from 14 (1 per cent) to 438 (13 per cent); the proportion
of households with access to clean water rose from 60 to 85 per cent;
and those getting electricity from 32 to 70 per cent. Six million citizens
received housing, 1.8 million hectares of land had been transferred into
black ownership, child-support grants were introduced, old-age pensions
increased, and nutrition programmes reached 4.5 million school children
(The Sunday Independent, 25 April 2004).
But another more disturbing side of South Africa’s political transition
was becoming apparent: one of unfulfilled promises and unmet expec-
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

tations. In the wake of national reconciliation, South Africans began

to experience the devastating effects of economic globalisation and de-
industrialisation. Economists questioned government statistics about job
creation. They pointed out that whilst the number of ‘casual’ workers
had increased, there had been drastic job losses in the mining, manu-
facturing, and construction industries. Sources estimated that only 6.8
million of South Africa’s economically active population of 15.5 million
were ‘formally’ employed (Robinson 2004). Crime, domestic instability,
1

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 2 Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa

violence, and HIV/AIDS emerged as issues of serious concern. In one

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survey, 23 per cent of all respondents indicated that they had been victims
of crime (Leggett, Louw, Schönteich, and Sekhonyane 2003). In 1999
only 37 per cent of Africans in the 30 to 34 age group, and 51 per cent
in the 35 to 39 age group, were married (Statistics South Africa 2000)
and in 2002 fewer than 40 per cent of all African children under the age
of 16 were reported as living with their fathers (Posel and Devey 2006:
38). Up to 48,000 rapes and 28,000 murders were reported to South
African police annually (Jewkes and Abrahams 2002; SAIRR 2002), and
an estimated five million South Africans were infected with the deadly
HI virus (Walker, Reid, and Cornell 2004). These figures were amongst
the highest for any country in the world. Whilst few South Africans held
government directly accountable for these woes, alienation was mount-
ing amongst the electorate. During the 2004 elections 44 per cent of
South Africa’s 27.5 million eligible voters shied away from the polls,
and another 250,000 voters spoilt their ballots on purpose (The Sunday
Independent, 18 April 2004).
Thus 2004 and 2005 were characterised by the paradoxical coexis-
tence of enfranchisement and apathy, upward social mobility and unem-
ployment, social welfare and increased mortality. Within this ambiguous
context Ashforth (2005) discerns increased ‘insecurity’ and fears about
‘witchcraft’. He contends that in Soweto,1 South Africa’s largest black
township, the rapid rise of a black middle class, increased competition
for jobs, declining fortunes of the poor, AIDS, the upsurge in crime,
and dissipation of community solidarity have all contributed to increased
distrust. Because misfortune can no longer credibly be explained with ref-
erence to the apartheid system as a form of structural evil, there has been
a renewed emphasis on witchcraft. Ashforth claims that those who fail to
achieve upward social mobility often see themselves as being held back
by the malevolent powers of envious and jealous others. Many diviners
reinforce and inflame these suspicions. In this social climate, witchcraft
is nearly always a sub-text of what is spoken about kin and neighbours.
Ashforth (2005) deploys the concept of ‘spiritual insecurity’ to capture
the ethos of anxiety aroused by the indeterminacy of invisible forces, such
as everyday threats of violence and of witchcraft.
Whereas Ashforth sticks to a strict division between an economy as
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

empirical reality and spiritual beliefs and practices arising therefrom,

Comaroff and Comaroff (1999a; 2000) transcend this division. They
emphasise the perceived mystical basis of social inequality in post-
apartheid South Africa, using the concept ‘occult economies’ to denote
a situation in which individuals are imagined to deploy magical means

1 Soweto is an acronym for Johannesburg’s southwestern townships, and has a population

of nearly two million people.

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 Introduction 3

for material ends. They see these ‘economies’ in reports of elders who
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use witchcraft to abort the process of natural reproduction, businessmen

who harvest human body parts to ensure good profits, and witches who
conjure zombies as a vast army of ghost workers to fuel a vibrant immoral
economy. These techniques are brutal forms of extraction, involving the
destruction of others, but have the allure of making profits without ordi-
nary production costs.2 Comaroff and Comaroff contend that young
men, for whom the promise of postcolonial prosperity is most obviously
blocked, have taken it upon themselves to cleanse the country of witches
and ritual murderers.
The aim of this monograph is to explore how the biography of one
South African can inform our understanding of witchcraft in contem-
porary South Africa. I seek to tell the story of how one teacher, Jimmy
Mohale, experienced the broader changes taking place in the country
from 1964 to 2005, and came to interpret the misfortunes he encoun-
tered and his fatal illness as resulting from his father’s witchcraft.
As a biographical study, this monograph complements Ashforth’s lively
Madumo: a man bewitched (1999), which focuses on a young man in
Soweto who was accused of bewitching his own mother. The story tells
how Madumo was robbed of his right to mourn her death, and was chased
from home, having his blankets burnt. Madumo sees his experience of
being labelled a witch as a sign that he himself is bewitched, and sets
about to seek a cure by consulting a range of diviners and church-based
healers. Though Madumo’s attempts to reconcile with his siblings fail
dismally, he visits his father’s kin in a rural village near Mafikeng and
hosts a feast for his paternal ancestors. When the ancestors are adjudged
to be satisfied, Madumo is convinced that they are now behind him
and that the witches have been defeated. He vows to stop smoking and
drinking, to build a new home where his grandfather used to live, and
to start selling second-hand clothes. Ashforth (1999) shows witchcraft
accusations as arising from hostile struggles within the family, and from
a reality of hatred that lies beneath the surface of togetherness.
Jimmy’s story differs from that of Madumo in two crucial respects.
First, it is set in a rural context. It takes place largely in Impalahoek,
a village in the Bushbuckridge area of the South African lowveld pop-
ulated by about 20,000 Northern Sotho and Shangaan people. During
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

the era of apartheid, Impalahoek formed part of the Northern Sotho

Bantustan, Lebowa. After the country’s first democratic elections in

2 Comaroff and Comaroff (1999b) describe zombies as an ‘army of spectral workers’,

who, like immigrants from elsewhere on the continent, usurp scarce jobs from young
people and prevent them from establishing families. Through being in ‘wandering exile’,
zombies bear testimony to the rupture of connections between people and place. As tools
that are stored in a shed, zombies also highlight the mounting confusion of people and
things.

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 4 Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa

1994, Impalahoek was incorporated into the newly established province

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of Limpopo, and then transferred to Mpumalanga Province in 2006.

Second, whereas Madumo was unemployed and seen as draining house-
hold resources, Jimmy was an aspirant member of South Africa’s new
middle class. He was a brilliant pupil, obtained a Bachelor of Education
degree, became a gifted teacher, married another professional, fathered
three healthy children, and was an executive member of the local ANC
branch. The misfortunes Jimmy attributed to witchcraft were therefore
more unexpected, and more intimately related to his perception that
something was subverting his life chances and preventing him from real-
ising the middle-class life course he deserved.

Theoretical Concerns
The monograph focuses on Jimmy Mohale’s narratives and recollections
of very concrete experiences. But there are nonetheless a number of more
abstract theoretical concerns that shape my understanding of the mate-
rial. I adopt a ‘pragmatic’ approach, which seeks to understand the con-
stitutive place of individuals and of events in social processes. Logically,
this approach aims to transcend the oppositions between the abstract
social system and the individual agent, and between history and event.
It treats fieldwork as a matter of engaging and interpreting lived social
worlds, rather than mapping out the nature of social systems (Ortner
1984; 1996; 2006; Hastrup 1995; 2005). I seek to narrate the interrelat-
edness of social contexts, historical processes, events, personal disposi-
tions and states of mind. In so doing I aim to transcend the limitations
of a purely interpretive and relativist approach, and I ask uncomfortable
questions about anthropological interventions in times of fatal illness.
A foremost concern is to investigate the relationship between witchcraft
beliefs and accusations, and the contexts in which they occur. In this
respect, I see as untenable any strong formulation of Ashforth’s (1999;
2005) and Comaroff and Comaroff’s (1999a; 2000) arguments, which
treat the proliferation of discourses about witchcraft as a ‘response’ to
the ambiguities of the post-apartheid situation. At a seminar at the Uni-
versity of Chicago, during 2002, Sahlins made a telling criticism of the
theory that witchcraft accusations are an index of political and economic
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

inequalities. He pointed out that no witchcraft accusations are made

in Polynesia, despite the salience of rank and hierarchy that prevails in
that part of the world. Witchcraft, he suggested, has more to do with
cosmology (personal communication).
Likewise, West (2007) argues that discourses about sorcery do not
symbolise other realities. Muedan people in Mozambique were adamant
that sorcery is not a metaphor of abstract things such as social predation.
They insisted that sorcery is real! West (2007) contends that it makes

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