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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Killing to Order: Muti Murder in Postapartheid South Africa
| Panel |
57. Post-apartheid's social imaginaries
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| Paper ID | 426 |
| Author(s) |
Vincent, Louise
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | South Africa is one of the few countries in the world with a police unit dedicated to the investigation of occult crimes. It is estimated that some 300 people have been murdered for their body parts in the last decade in South Africa. In this deployment of ‘magical means for material ends’ sex, sexuality and gender feature strongly. Genitals, breasts and placentas are said to ward off infertility and bring good luck. The genitalia of young boys and virgin girls are especially highly prized on account of being ‘uncontaminated’ by sexual contact – and therefore having more potent medicinal properties. An estimated 80 per cent of the South African population regularly makes use of traditional medicine or ‘muti’ (derived from umu thi, meaning tree). Muti killings are ‘to order’ in two senses. Firstly in the sense that the traditional healer describes to a hired murderer what parts are needed and the manner in which they are to be collected: testicles for virility purposes, fat from the breasts or abdomen for luck, tongues to smooth the path to a lover’s heart. But there is a second sense in which muti murders can be understood as being about ‘killing to order’: the appeal to culture and tradition to make meaning and recreate a sense of predictability and orderliness in an unruly post-apartheid, late capitalist world or rapid change, failed political expectations, massive economic deprivation and rampant criminality. This paper examines ways in which the language of ‘culture’ is used simultaneously to report, legitimise, castigate, ‘other’ and regulate muti killings, body mutilation and organ sale in contemporary South Africa. The paper examines too the extent to which what has sometimes been labelled an ‘epidemic’ of occult-related violence challenges the idea of a postcolonial order based on liberal universalism and legal rationality.
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