ABSTRACT
Chapter 10 examines cases of insults, frequently heard in customary village courts. Here, what is at stake is often not merely financial compensation, but the public shaming of a person or the redemptive demand by the dishonoured for recognition and dignity. The chapter argues that legal anthropologists have been slow to join the socio-legal debate about law and emotion, responding to the counter-intuitive proposition that the law is ‘imbued with emotion’. As in the USA and Europe, in Botswana too, cases of public insults heard in village courts are emotionally charged and subjectively felt intensely, and this is particularly so in witchcraft insult-accusations. These, the chapter argues, are to be grasped as inchoate crimes, akin to hate crimes, rather than allegations of literal occult practice. Insults threaten communal harmony and are thus associated with an elaborate moral lexicon mobilised by members of a customary court in their attempt not simply to ascertain the forensic facts of what actually happened, but to persuade offenders to regain their rationality, their desirable subjectivity, and to reach a self-conscious emotional equilibrium and spiritual calmness, in a dialogue leading to the restoration of public peace and eliciting forgiveness from plaintiffs, the victims of insults.
