An Epidemic of Witchcraft? The Implications of AIDS for the Post-Apartheid State

In a scene replayed tens of thousands of times in recent years in South Africa, a relative appeared at the Khanyile family’s door in the informal settlement of Snake Park on the outskirts of Soweto to inform them of a funeral. A cousin in a town not far off had passed away. A young man in his late twenties or early thirties, the deceased had been sick for some time. In their message announcing the funeral, the dead cousin’s parents speci ed nothing about the illness, other than to say he had died after a long illness. The relative visiting the Khanyiles, however, whispered the cause: Isidliso. Khanyile and his family took note. They know about this isidliso, otherwise called “Black poison”, an evil work of the people they call witches. Along with whatever treatments the deceased relative would have secured from medical practitioners in his town, they knew without being told that he had been taken to traditional healers to combat the witchcraft manifest in the form of isidliso. All the Khanyile family members concurred with this diagnosis except one. A daughter, Moleboheng, twenty-seven and skeptical, thought the cousin’s story