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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Government Witchcraft: Taxation, the Supernatural, and the Mpondo Revolt in the Transkei, South Africa, 1955-1963 |
Author: | Redding, Sean |
Year: | 1996 |
Periodical: | African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society |
Volume: | 95 |
Issue: | 381 |
Period: | October |
Pages: | 555-579 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Transkei |
Subjects: | Pondo rebellions witchcraft 1950-1959 1960-1969 Ethnic and Race Relations Politics and Government Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/723444 |
Abstract: | When the Mpondo revolt broke out in the Transkei, South Africa, in 1959-1960, white South African authorities were caught off balance. Magistrates and officially appointed chiefs all over the Transkei were in the process of implementing Bantu Authorities legislation that would eventually bring apartheid-generated 'self-rule' to the territory in 1963. Low-level unrest had been simmering for several years, but white officials consistently acted as if this unrest were of little consequence. The present article explores how witchcraft beliefs permeated State administrative practices and affected the development of the revolt. It shows that what impelled people to revolt in the 1950s was the fact that the South African State began to delegate more power to appointed chiefs, and that simultaneously the supernatural powers of the State seemed to take a more destructive turn. Taxes went up, stock thieves stole at will, and the State was more concerned with collecting taxes and protecting alleged stock thieves than it was with stopping the theft. Malevolent State witchcraft called for methods of witchcraft eradication to combat it. By the end of 1963, the revolt had been suppressed and the State went ahead with its plans to grant the Transkei self-governing status. Notes, ref. |