Isak Niehaus provides the context for this fascinating study of witchcraft practices. He shows how the witchcraft was politicized against the backdrop of the apartheid state, the liberation struggle and the establishment of the first post-apartheid regime all affected conceptions of witchcraft. Niehaus demonstrates how the ANC and other political groups used witchcraft beliefs to further their own agenda. He explores the increasingly conservative role of the chiefs and the Christian church. In the process, he reveals the fraught nature of intergenerational and gender relations.

The result is a truly insightful and theoretically engaged account of a much-studied but frequently misunderstood practice.