ABSTRACT
This essay investigates the symbolic politics of three witch-hunts in a chief-dom of the South African lowveld during the 1990s. In the last years of apartheid young men, known as Comrades, assumed the forefront of political struggles. Comrades embarked upon witch-hunting campaigns to banish evil and misfortune, and thereby to attain legitimacy as a political movement. Since the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, a situation of pluralistic political structures emerged. Branches of the ANC and ANC Women's League were launched, Civic Associations were established, and chiefship was gradually reconstituted. As adults assumed positions of political leadership, the influence of the Comrades diminished. Witch-hunts of the 1990s are multifaceted social dramas, which involve different modes of participation and bear a variety of different meanings for political audiences. As such they reveal changing relations of alliance and opposition between the different political structures. I argue that through time, growing schisms have developed between the ANC and the Comrades, who have continued to be the most vociferous participants in witch-hunting. Local ANC leaders have been unsuccessful in resolving the conflicting demands of villagers (who demand their assistance in the eradication of witchcraft) and those of their political superiors (who require that they oppose witch-hunting).
