An 81-year-old woman in KwaKwiliza near Mtubatuba in KwaZulu-Natal was stabbed 50 times and had her throat slit because her neighbour accused her of being a witch. According to the police he was of the belief that the elderly woman had killed two members of his family members through using witchcraft.
Captain Jabulani Mdletshe said that the police were called to the scene but the man had already escaped.
This incident, one of thousands that have taken place down the years, should give us reason to pause and consider whether the time has not arrived to make witchcraft a criminal offence.
The basis therefore is not based upon religious conviction but rather the very real need to give people access to the law before they murder any more innocent people. The only alternative being the introduction of the death penalty for any party who commits murder based upon the premise that the victim is a witch.
While there will no doubt be an uproar regarding the limitation of religious freedom in South Africa, something entrenched in the Constitution, there appears to be a deafening silence every time people branded as witches are horrendously slaughtered.
When Mpumalanga tried to introduce the Witchcraft Suppression Bill of 2007 they were met with fierce resistance. “The purpose of the bill is to suppress Acts of witchcraft including naming and pointing of any body as a wizard or witch. To deal with the violence associated with allegations of witchcraft and deal with killings including ritual killing associated with witchcraft and empowering Traditional leaders to deal with Witchcraft aspects.”
It defines witchcraft as: The secret use of muti, zombies, spells, spirits, magic powders, water, mixtures, etc by any person with the purpose of causing harm, damage, sickness to others or their property.
“Self-defined Witches have rejected this definition on the grounds that it stereotypes witchcraft as harmful and portrays Witches as a danger to the communities within which they live and work. The proposed definition will merely serve to justify public fear of witchcraft and promote malice and violence against suspected witches.” (Wikipedia)
The problem is that a huge number of South Africans believe in witchcraft and the ability of witches to occasion deadly consequences for those that cross them. That is not going to go away.
Neither is the fact that once a “victim of witchcraft” believes that they are under attack then the party whom they consider to be the witch is in deadly danger. If they are lucky enough to be identified thought may be given to putting them into some kind of witness protection programme.
Unfortunately very few are that lucky.
Anyone can be “sniffed” out as a witch and then has the misfortune of a visit like the one described above awaiting them.
So until such time as someone can put forward a better suggestion for protecting people accused of witchcraft — and not the current law which makes it an offence to call someone a witch — legislation to make it a criminal offence to be a witch seems to be the only answer. In tandem that anyone now possessed of this legal channel to accuse witches, who practices self-help, be given the stiffest possible sentences available to a court faced with that charge.
Denying some form of religious freedom is very ugly but what happened to an 81-year-old woman and many others like her is far uglier.
You cannot meaningfully outlaw superstition, or in fact any beliefs, whether they be objectively groundless or not.
It would in any case be pointless, as murder is illegal regardless of the beliefs of the perpetrator.
Nor can the ‘practice of witchcraft’ conceivably be circumscribed by a legally meaningful definition.
The fault lies with the efficacy of our criminal justice system to uphold the laws we already have.
If perpetrators believe they have little chance of being apprehended and successfully prosecuted and convicted, then the justice system presents no deterrent, no matter how preemptive one thinks the legislation has been designed.
This has been addressed many times in the past. If a person murders another person, that is exactly what it is, murder. If they include Witchcraft, Satanism or even Christian symbolism or acts to perform that murder makes no difference, it is murder and should be tried as murder, not religion. Plus we must bear in mind that calling someone of African descent who uses African Witchcraft means something completely different to calling someone who practices European Witchcraft, especially when you get down to the real roots of the word witch, being Anglo Saxon Old English in origin, and meaning something closer to the title of shaman. Words are used without thought nowadays which is a shame. The word witch got a negative connotation over the years and so it is used to describe such. The people using it usually don;t know what they are actually referring to unfortunately and so it becomes a constant, tiring cycle of someone saying XYZ and those who know better explaining over and over again.
It’s a fine line between traditional healers (who might not be successful) and witches.
Witches are often in the eye of the beholder, rather than self-confessed.
The excuse for murder should be immaterial. I doubt this murderer considered himself responsible for what he did. Justified, yes, but don’t most of SA murderers?
Murder is the sin, rather than witchery. And I’m quite surprised a lawyer doesn’t get that. So methinks I wouldn’t want to get Trapido to defend me no matter what I was accused of…
Oh right, and the vicious vigilante mob is going to just accept a verdict of not guilty and allow the person they are blaming for all their misfortunes to return home and carry on with their life. Or perhaps we just like the idea of forcing some poor elderly woman to go through the indignity of arrest, imprisonment and trial before we send her back to be murdered by her neighbours?
Well how do we know she was not a witch?
If you can believe in an invisible man in the sky that will burn you if you do bad things then I say you can believe in witchcraft. I find witchcraft no more ludicrous than Christian, Jewish or Muslim beliefs and if you outlaw the one, you may as well outlaw the lot.
WOW. What an excellent idea! Let’s go the whole hog and get rid of ALL criminal activity by, not only criminalizing Witchcraft, but doing the same for Christianity, Judaism and Islam. THAT way we will protect ALL citizens, not only Witches.
It is already an offence to practice witchcraft. Section 1 (b) of the Suppression of Witchcraft Act 3 of 1957 provides that any person who professes or pretends to use witchcraft shall be guilty of an offence which attracts stiff penalties. So far no witch has sought to strike down this law as invalid for its inconsistency with the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom as set out in the Bill of Rights. It is however notoriously difficult to enforce the existing law because credible evidence of profession or pretense is difficult to come by in the quarters in which the practice of witchcraft is found. Perhaps this is why no challenge has been mounted, striking down a dead letter law that has apparently escaped the attention of the esteemed Traps would seem to be an awful waste of time and effort.
Welcome to the arena of conflicting world-views. Witchcraft steeped in African world-view and SA Laws steeped in Western world-view. From the different reactions we can see that you cannot “marry” these two world-views.
Mungikhi has the most practical solution, put the elderly in old age homes.
I fail to see how this idea would give any meaningful protection to anyone – being able to report witchcraft to the police as a crime will only work if:
(1) there’s a possibility of conviction, reliant on:
(a) proof of witchcraft/harm/potential harm (how?);
(b) adequate investigative work and attendance at court by complainants, witnesses and officers;
(c) justice being seen to be reasonably swift (further burdening the courts seems to preclude this)
(2) An injunction on commissioning any further similar or related acts whilst on remand/awaiting trial.
(3) Sufficient law enforcement personnel close to ‘victims’/'perpetrators’.
(4) A belief that witchcraft can be subject to manmade laws and enforcement officials.
This last one is the absolute death blow. If HIV is not always subject to conventional medicine according to many beliefs, nor is it preventable by the use of condoms (if you are cursed to receive HIV the condom will surely fail or break, thus rendering it redundant), how on earth can witchcraft be subject to quasi-Western systems of enforcement and correction? It is madness to suggest it so.
Far better to simply use the statutes and common law processes that exist to deal with issues such as harassment and premeditated murder.
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.
“In communities where a witchcraft paradigm informs understandings about other peoples’ motives and capacities, life must be lived in terms of a presumption of malice.”
– AIDS in the Witchraft Paradigm of Power, by Adam Ashforth
Grant Walliser and Peter Henry Eck you’ve made my day.
Indeed in the african context “witchcraft” is what you’d call the dark arts. Most of them start as normal healers, but as in any other society spanning thousand or so years back, theres always some recluse who goes and messing with stuff that isn’t in their interest to mess with (maybe not, woteva)
nonetheless it amazes me to label this an african problem. maybe its why in our language we separate the two.
healer >> inyanga, igqhira, isangoma etc
witch >> umthakathi, igqhwira, umloyi etc
others can elbatorate the difference words we use.
Traps, speak to the house of traditional leaders and they’ll shed some light on the futility of this proposal
The idea would work if there was a more objective way to identify and convict an accused witch.
The challenge is, how will this be done. I am a black man, and i believe in the Black man’s definition of a witch, which is not necessarily the same as the western definition.
People will tell you that they saw a Sangoma who told them that they are being bewitched by so and so.
Well my experience is that most genuine Sangomas would actually desist from telling you who is putting the curse on you, especially if they can see that you an unstable type who can’t control his emotions.
So more than likely, we will end up with the same situation most people being wrongly accused and maybe convicted because of personal grudges.
This one should be left to the Traditional Leaders. If i remember correctly, many African communities had courts to deal with these isuues, led by the kings and chiefs of cause. My suggestion is to revive those courts and just amend what we feel might be outdated
And how exactly will criminalisation make witchcraft, or the suspicions of people that someone is a witch, go away?
The suggestion appears to me as a step to the dark ages.
People need to be educated about dealing with allegation in an appropriate way.
I blame these new fangled Re-born African Christian Churches who are fanning the flames and installing the ideas of witchcraft into gullible people so they can make huge profits out of it by exorcising the possessed.
Also I think anybody stupid enough to believe they need to murder witches is not going to listen to the law whatever rules you make. Infact by acknowledging there are witches would justify their killings rather than stop them. You need to tell them there are no witches, no bogey men and even Santa Claus aint’ real.
Michael how can you justify having a witchcraft act? If people were killing in the name of the Eater bunny would you propose an Easter Bunny act? All you would do is make the people believe the Easter Bunny really was real. It wouldn’t stop them killing. Murder is against the law and they know they but don’t care. Educate the people – don’t feed the fear.
Earth to Michael. We are living in the 21st century. Let us use some modern technology like tv, radio and cell phone sms’s to bring those living in the dark ages into the 21st century. The only real witches in the 21st century are a bunch of tree hugging Pagans and they don’t harm anybody. It’s time these superstitions were put into perspective and revealed for exactly what they are – superstitious nonesense. Kill the nonesnse – don’t encourage it by making laws for it. Next you will be telling us to make laws to accomodate the Tokolosh.
Angie’s Friend on January 17th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I suggest you take a month’s holiday, hell even a week, and go traipse around the Transkei and see the kinda witch-craft related cases the SAPS have to investigate.
Hell, go to your local SAPS and treat this as a reserarch topic. don’t be so ignorant.
Grant,
Slight difference between christianity and witchcraft. I don’t know of any christian doctrine, that states that to ‘get rich’ or to ‘get sexually potent’ or ‘be lucky’; or ‘powerful’; you should eat medicine, which includes human body parts harvested off people who are still alive, and that the greater terror inflicted upon the harvested victim, the greater the transfer of power….
Do you know any such Christian, or Christian doctrine?
White Refugee
Do you know any such Christian, or Christian doctrine?
Yes, actually. If you eat the body of some dude who died 2000 years ago, you will be saved from burning in hell. Also all your wishes er . . prayers will be granted if you drink his blood.
Not much difference between witchcraft and christianity
Well said Eligos. I would also like to add that when it comes to “the greater terror inflicted upon the harvested victim, the greater the transfer of power”, well then the Christians wrote the book on that one with their Inquisition, Crusades and Witch-burnings/killings of the 1600-1800′s (the latter numbering in excess of the Holocaust). Christianity is a religion borne out of blood and violence that is diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus, their so-called martyr. They also love to quote the Old Testament (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”, a command given by Levi) to justify the slaughter but then conveniently brush aside the First Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, a command given directly by their god. No wonder they are all so confused!
Eligos,
It appears you misunderstand the difference between symbology and fact. No wafer or grape justice/wine distributed in any christian church claims to include therein the actual blood of christ, or body of christ. They say it ‘symbolizes’ it; and most white christians know what the word ‘symbolizes’ mean.
The people who were instrumental as anti-abolitionists of slavery — Christians!
——-
Sorry, I thought the discussion was about current practices. If the discussion is about past brutality by religions, I would agree all religions have a large number of crusade victims to account for. Muslims have not only the over 100 million in terms of Trans Sahara Slavery; but also the self confessed: millions of Christians, Buddhists etc.
I was referring to current practices of religions in South Africa, in 2010. I don’t particulary care what anyone’s religion is (mine is Radical Honesty Bushido Dischordianism); if it gives them existential meaning; without violently inflicing their beliefs on others..
It appears however one religion (withcraft/muti) in South Africa, has not developed, like Christianity did, out of its dark ages, of superstition and sacrifice.
If I knew of any Christians going about chopping of penises and vagina’s, in the year 2010, I’d say the same thing. I don’t know any; do you Julian?????
Paul Hoffman said, “It is already an offence to practice witchcraft. Section 1 (b) of the Suppression of Witchcraft Act 3 of 1957 provides that any person who professes or pretends to use witchcraft shall be guilty of an offence which attracts stiff penalties. So far no witch has sought to strike down this law as invalid for its inconsistency with the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom as set out in the Bill of Rights.”
This is not true. The South African Pagan Rights Alliance and the South African Pagan Council has appealed to the Law Reform Commission to repeal this Act on the grounds that it criminalizes self-identified Witches. The members of our organization do define as Witches.
Just a point of correction here, lest we get further derailed.
“It appears however one religion (withcraft/muti) in South Africa, has not developed, like Christianity did, out of its dark ages, of superstition and sacrifice. ”
Witchcraft is not a religion…its a cultural practice or a chosen way of life.
Witchcraft has no place in a modern society – and cannot exist in a modern constitutional democracy – It belongs in the dark ages – it has no basis AT ALL in fact and keeping it alive will keep fear, ignorance and poverty alive and well too. What we need is a massive education drive. Oh wait, sorry i forgot! Our school system has been collapsing for the last ten years – oh well.
So I’m a fairy. And someone tries to kill me because I’m a fairy. How is making being a fairy illegal going to stop that?
You’re confusing the cause and the symptom. A man killed a woman for reasons unknown, alleging that she was a witch was his excuse. Witchcraft (real or imagined, Western or African) has nothing to do with it.
We have laws against witchcraft (which some of us are trying to get repealed for obvious reasons) and we have laws against murder. What we need here is to stop people using witchcraft as an excuse for petty revenge against people they don’t like or are jealous of or who are marginalised and vulnerable.
Witches pertain to Witchcraft, and the misuse of the word Witchcraft is due to the mis-categorization of African Nyanga / Tokolosh / Traditional Muti, etc. – chopping up body parts, causing people to die, killing people imagined to be Nyanga / Tokolosh / etc. only proves the ignorant and undereducated state of rural villages and peoples.
Witchcraft is an English word for an English meaning of the European definition of the subgroup of Paganism, which has absolutely less than nothing to do with Traditional African Muti / etc. (use a isiXhosa / Zulu dictionary if you want to find the words incorrectly correlated to witches / witchcraft).
Bottom line is that outlawing a globally recognized and constitutionally protected religion is as daft as outlawing minority religions based on the premise that IGNORANCE IS EXCUSABLE!!
Next they’ll be trying to pass a ban on women wearing “revealing clothing” (i.e. skirts above the knees) because certain minority cultures “cannot” keep their urges under control. Isn’t that what this entire expedition is encouraging – Dropping COMMON SENSE in favor of entertaining inadequate education and limited understanding?
Well done. Spectacular work. If enough people are reportedly afraid of ghosts, why not make GHOSTS illegal?? They haunt people, kill them, eat them– oh wait, that’s paranoid superstition.
@Damon Leff and all the other wee pagans –
Stop using the words “witchcraft” and “witches” to soapbox your sad little stance. This is about murder and you have already made total fools of yourselves over the Mpumalanga witchcraft Bill.
The law makes it an offence for any person who, inter alia, accuses any other person of causing, by supernatural means, of any disease in or injury or damage to any person or thing, or who names or indicates any other person as a wizard and in the case of an offence in consequence of which the person in respect of whom such offence was committed, has been killed that person is liable to be imprisoned for twenty years.
If the South African Pagan Rights Alliance and the South African Pagan Council now want this provision repealed, then you need to very carefully examine your motives because in fact, nobody really gives a hairy goat’s knee about a bunch of wannabees running around at full moon and purporting to be witches etc.
Are you grandstanding or can you prove that there is a REAL threat that you guys are in danger?
What the law is concerned about is activity that can – and does – result in murder.
@White Refugee
I figure that I do understand the difference between between symbology and fact.
What seems to escape you though, is that with these sorts of practices, everything is symbolic – not just the christian pratcices but also those of the “witches” and mutimen and women.
The fact is that there is no difference between the various practices – only the purpose and symbol.