From Witchcraft to Satanism: Changing Imaginations and New Experiences in the South African Lowveld

Abstract

During the 1980s, fears of Satanism gripped public imaginations across the globe. La Fontaine argues that these fears started in Canada and the United States, where Christians relived their own childhood experiences of sexual abuse at the hands of Satanists. Fears of witchcraft became most acute during the late 1980s. At the time, Bushbuckridge still formed part of the Apartheid government’s Lebowa and Gazankulu homelands. This chapter explores some broader social and cultural reasons for the shift from witchcraft to Satanism in the public domain of Bushbuckridge. It draws on the results of participant observation and on interviews with 21 research participants who claimed to have witnessed episodes of satanic possession. These sources show how the growing prominence of Pentecostal-type churches has granted Satan a greater cosmological immanence in Bushbuckridge. Witchcraft has a long and varied history in the South African lowveld, marked by different periods of intensification.