WITCHCRAFT AND THE EXCHANGE OF SEX, BLOOD, AND MONEY AMONG AFRICANS IN CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

AbstractIn post-apartheid South Africa witchcraft is an ever-growing concern, as political liberation has not led to liberation from occult forces. The study of modernity and globalisation has revealed the significance of the study of witchcraft in contemporary Africa. Among Xhosa migrants in Cape Town the discourse on witchcraft also revealed very specific problems that people encountered within close relationships. The lived conflicts, anxieties and desires were revealed in the exchange of sex, blood (as a metaphor for life itself ), and money. This same pattern of exchange appeared in witchcraft, and particularly the role of witch familiars. Witch familiars embodied the anxieties and desires that people experienced on a daily basis concerning sex, blood, and flows of money in intimate relations. The structural problems that were part of the migrants' social configurations were thus revealed in a structural pattern of exchange within witchcraft.