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This is an extraordinary contemporary account of witchcraft and
witch-hunting in the modern world. A powerful ethnographic study of
witch-hunting in 1980s South Africa - a period of rapid social
change - this book demonstrates the extent to which witchcraft must
be seen, not as a residue of 'traditional' culture but as part of a
complex social drama which is deeply embedded in contemporary
political and economic processes. Isak Niehaus provides the context
for this fascinating study of witchcraft practices. He shows how
witchcraft was politicised against the backdrop of the apartheid
state, the liberation struggle and the establishment of the first
post-apartheid regime, which all affected conceptions of
witchcraft. Niehaus demonstrates how the ANC and other political
groups used witchcraft beliefs to further their own agenda. He
explores the increasingly conservative role of the chiefs and the
Christian church. In the process, he reveals the fraught nature of
intergenerational and gender relations. The result is a truly
insightful and theoretically engaged account of a much-studied but
frequently misunderstood practice.
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