From Traditional African Religions in South African Law: “Witchcraft and the Constitution”

by Mabel on Nov 11th, 2011

Nelson Tebbe, Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, is one of the contributors to the recently released volume Traditional African Religions in South African Law edited by TW Bennett.

Tebbe’s essay, entitled “Witchcraft and the Constitution”, examines constitutional questions surrounding witchcraft beliefs and practices in South Africa. Read the essay in full, courtesy the Social Science Research Network:

Two women in their sixties were confronted by a group, dragged from a home to a sports field, doused with petrol, and set alight. Both perished. Journalists reported that one of the women was the grandmother of a twelfth-grade student who was the only person in her class not failing exams. Classmates blamed the grandmother for their lack of success at school – in other words, they suspected that she had used witchcraft to aid her granddaughter’s studies and to thwart other students.

In another incident, a crowd of about eight hundred people surrounded a home, threw stones through the windows, and threatened to incinerate the building along with the family inside. Police used stun grenades to protect the inhabitants. Officers later told reporters that the crowd had assembled after the murder of a nine-year-old girl. When her body was discovered, it was found to be missing an eye and, according to some reports, its genitals as well. People gathered on speculation that family members had killed the girl for her body parts, which could be used in muthi (a term sometimes translated as ‘medicine’). They blamed the family because of its relative wealth, which they suspected came from selling body parts for use in healing or witchcraft.

Although the incidence of violence related to occult beliefs has not been determined by a reliable empirical study, media reports like these appear frequently in South Africa. Two types of stories are common, represented by the two accounts above. First are attacks on supposed witches, like the brutal murder of the grandmother and her companion. Second are accounts of killings for body parts, presumably so that the parts can be used in muthi, and reprisals against those suspected of carrying out such murders. By some accounts, violence against suspected witches reached a peak during the transition to democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and since then it has remained a significant factor – though, again, levels of such violence are difficult to discern with any accuracy.