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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If the South African Pagan Rights Alliance and the South African Pagan Council now want this provision repealed, then you need to very carefully examine your motives because in fact, nobody really gives a hairy goat’s knee about a bunch of wannabees running around at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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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?????

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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!

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