Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa

Cloth $75.00 ISBN: 9780226029733 Published February 2005

Paper $30.00 ISBN: 9780226029740 Published February 2005

How does democracy fare when the people governed insist they live in a world with witches? If the government of a people afflicted by witchcraft refuses to punish witches, how does it avoid becoming alienated from the perceived needs of its people or, worse, seen as being in league with witches? In Soweto, South Africa, the constant threat of violent crime, the increase in black socio-economic inequality, the AIDS pandemic, and a widespread fear of witchcraft have converged to create a pervasive sense of insecurity among citizens and a unique public policy problem for government.

In Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, Adam Ashforth examines how people in Soweto and other parts of post-apartheid South Africa manage their fear of 'evil forces' such as witchcraft. Ashforth examines the dynamics of insecurity in the everyday life of Soweto at the turn of the twenty-first century. He develops a new framework for understanding occult violence as a form of spiritual insecurity and documents new patterns of interpretation attributing agency to evil forces. Finally, he analyzes the response of post-apartheid governments to issues of spiritual insecurity and suggests how these matters pose severe long-term challenges to the legitimacy of the democratic state.

African Politics Conference Group/London School of Economics and Political Science: Best Book on African Politics
Short Listed

African Studies Association: Melville J. Herskovits Award
Won
Co-winner

Association of Third World Studies: Toyin Falola ATWS Africa Book Award
Won

View Recent Awards page for more award winning books.

"Adam Ashforth masterfully relates witchcraft as a fact of everyday life in Soweto to policy issues at the summit of South African government. His challenging combination of anthropology and political science makes for a highly explosive mix with implications that are much broader than South Africa alone. This adventurous book drives home what insecurity really means. The expressions people give to it may differ, but the issues it raises and the efforts that are made to deal with them are surprisingly familiar."--Peter Geschiere, author of Modernity of Witchcraft

"Adam Ashforth's Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa is a work of the highest intellectual quality and beauty. Ashforth brings to life, gives texture and voice to, and writes about witchcraft in generous and humane fashion. Until now, study on witchcraft has been confined to the worlds of anthropology, religion, and history. Ashforth's bold and ambitious new book firmly inscribes its study in political science. It goes further than any other book in deconstructing 'witchcraft' as a concept, as a social and political practice, and as a paradigm."--Achille Mbembe, author of On the Postcolony

2005 Melville J. Herskovits Award, African Studies Association

"[The book] is undoubtedly a welcome addition to the long tradition of academic literature on South African witchcraft. The book also clarifies many issues of post-apartheid society in a thorough and well-informed manner and Ashforth's personal reflections make it an inspiring read"

“While residing in Soweto, South Africa’s largest township, Adam Ashforth was struck not only by everyday threats of violence, but also by the extremely pervasive fear of bewitchment. This monograph explores different aspects of such ‘spiritual insecurity’—that is, the anxiety aroused by the indeterminacy of invisible forces—and its political implications.”—Isak Niehaus, African Studies Review

2006 Toyin Falola Africa Book Award

"[This book] explores the implications of witchcraft and violence . . . for democracy and is an important and novel contribution to the anthropological and historical record of the recent political transitions in South Africa."

"A rich and illuminating treatment of the precariousness of life in Soweto and the workings of witchcraft in a contemporary setting."

"An accessible, skilfully written book. . . .Ashforth delivers an ambitious, cogently argued critique of the existing literature on witchcraft, rationality, and modernity in Africa with significant implications for policy makers."—Grace Davie, International Journal of African Historical Studies

"The book is rich in detail and insights, some of which apply not only to contemporary societies but also to historic witch-persecuting societies. . . . There is much in this thoughtful book of interest to the folklorist, anthropologist, sociologist, and historian, but its findings have important ramifications far beyond the world of academia."—Owen Davies, Folklore

"This is a terrific book, as in terrifying and awe-inspiring. . . . Ashforth is a political scientist by training, and a long-term resident of Soweto by avocation, and this book is the kind of grounded fieldwork that I . . . haven't seen that much of lately. . . . It makes for a very creative tension and a very good book."

"Ashforth has written a wise and almost beautiful book about witchcraft in contemporary Soweto. . . . [The] book should be essential reading not only for scholars but also for policy makers. It forcefully conveys the urgency of the witchcraft issue, it provides the ethnographic data necessary for understanding the problem, and it offers a sophisticated framework for facing the challenge that witchcraft poses for African democracy."

"Written with a novelist's verve, the book manages to be at once academically rigorous and pleasurably readable. . . . This is no mean feat for a work grounded deeply in both a contentious regional academic literature as well as a multilingual ethnographic research site. Ashforth has created a major work for scholars interested in the meaning of witchcraft in contemporary urban Africa and elsewhere."

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Nomenclature
Introduction
Part One / Soweto
1. Spiritual Insecurity and Political Power
2. Dimensions of Insecurity in Contemporary Soweto
3. On Living in a World with Witches
4. Freedom, Democracy, and Witchcraft: Soweto in the 1990s
5. On Believing, and Not Believing, in Witchcraft
Part Two / Sources of Spiritual Insecurity
6. Poison, Medicine, and the Power of Secret Knowledge
7. Death, Pollution, and the Dangers of Dirt
8. A Brief History of the Spirit World
9. Invisible Beings in Everyday Life
10. Vulnerabilities of the Soul
Part Three / Spiritual Insecurity and the State
11. Witchcraft, Violence, and Justice
12. Democratic Statecraft in a World of Witches
Epilogue
Appendix 1: The Literature on Soweto—a Brief Excursus
Appendix 2: The Thohoyandou Declaration on Ending Witchcraft Violence, Issued by the Commission on Gender Equality
Selected Bibliography
Index

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African Studies

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology | General Anthropology

Culture Studies

History: African History

Law and Legal Studies: Law and Society

Political Science: Comparative Politics | Race and Politics

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