Certifying Idliso: The Gap Between Customary Recognition and State Silence Through Victimology

In South Africa, idliso is understood in isiZulu as poisoning or bewitchment administered in secret. In everyday KwaZulu-Natal usage, it is also a love medicine said to turn the man who is fed it violent. It is diagnosed by traditional health practitioners yet has no name in state law. The Witchcraft Suppression Act 3 of 1957 criminalises the accusation of witchcraft but not the act. Courts reframe substance cases as assault or murder. The Traditional Health Practitioners Act 22 of 2007 registers healers while remaining silent on harmful practices within traditional health practice and on redress for the victims of such practices. This study asks what happens to accountability and victimhood when idliso is invoked to explain a man’s violence against his intimate partner. it analyses semi-structured interviews with twenty young adults aged 21 to 35 in KwaThoyana and uMnini, two rural communities on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast. The interviews formed part of a larger study of intimate partner violence, in which idliso arose unprompted. The analysis is exploratory. Idliso was not part of the interview guide; six of the twenty participants raised it unprompted, and their accounts were analysed thematically against four research questions, drawing also on victimological work on the ideal victim and secondary victimisation. Given the small number of accounts, the findings are offered as a basis for further research rather than as conclusive. The findings show that the idliso account is held as communal knowledge before violence occurs. It is attributed to izinyanga (traditional healers who work mainly with herbal medicine). The account forecloses the man’s responsibility while making the woman either the accused or a victim who is afraid to speak. The two young men who described their own use of idliso did not narrate any harm, sanction or shame arising from it. The study recommends that the recognition of idliso claims and healer accountability be addressed within a constitutional framework that recognises both customary law and gender equality, beginning with research on izinyanga themselves.