#adam ashforth

When people worry about 'witchcraft' in Soweto, they almost always have in mind the possibility that malicious persons are using harmful substances known generically, in the Zulu lingua franca of these parts, as muthi. When traditional healers administer aid to patients in distress, they almost always dispense substances also known generically as muthi. The term muthi (spelled muti in Xhosa transliterations) derives from the Nguni root -thi, signifying 'tree.' Usually translated into English as either 'medicine' or 'poison,' with the anodyne 'herbs' used in ambiguous instances, muthi refers to substances fabricated by an expert hand, substances designed by persons possessing secret knowledge to achieve either positive ends of healing, cleansing, strengthening, and protecting persons from evil forces, or negative ends of witchcraft, bringing illness, misfortune, and death to others or illicit wealth and power to the witch.      . . . To understand the sorts of things people worry about when they worry about exposure to invisible evil forces in places like Soweto, it is essential to understand the various ways in which people interpret the agency inherent in substances categorized as muthi and the ways in which both human persons and invisible beings interact with them.      The distinction between healing and its antithesis, witchcraft, is an essentially moral one, based on interpretations of the motives of persons deploying muthi and the ends to which these forces are directed. Witches seeking to cause harm work with muthi as poison; healers seeking well-being work with muthi as medicine. Though directed toward health and well-being—a general condition of bodily health, spiritual ease, and social harmony referred to as impilo (in Zulu; phela, Sotho)—the muthi of healers also brings death. When a healer sets out to cure a person afflicted by witchcraft, he or she will typically promise that their muthi will return the evil forces by the witch to their source, thereby killing the witch. Such violence, however, is legitimate, for it is executed in the name of defense. Witches, by definition, are engaged in illegitimate uses of the powers of muthi. In everyday discourse when Sowetans refer to witchcraft, they do not usually trouble themselves with distinctions between people enjoying innate capacities to direct evil forces, people with secret knowledge about the evil uses of muthi, and people purchasing muthi from professionals for their own nefarious purposes. Each and every person deploying muthi for malicious or illegitimate ends—such as, say, accumulating excessive wealth or power—is spoken of as a 'witch.'

In the week since embarking upon his search for a cure, Madumo had been making rounds of various healers in our vicinity. There are two basic types of healers in these parts [Soweto, South Africa] specializing in treating the woes of sufferers such as Madumo: the traditional healer and the Christian prophet. Traditional healers are also commonly known, in Zulu, the Sowetan lingua franca, as inyangas or sangomas. (The terms in Soweto these days, along with those from other regional languages, are mostly interchangeable, and whatever subtle distinction they may once have carried has been swamped in tides of innovation and ignorances.) They heal by virtue of their special calling from ancestral spirits, who empower them in the use of herbs and other substances. Prophets, authorized through their connection with the spirits of deceased ancestors mingled with those of church founders, ultimately find their calling through communion with the Holy Spirit. They heal by means of holy water or everyday commodities, such as tea, coffee, soap, or Vaseline, administered in procedures not dissimilar, from the perspective of an outsider, to those of traditional healers. In my experience, all healers, Christian and otherwise, whatever else they may do, claim to be able to read the past and divine the future of their patients in order to provide a much needed spiritual security in the present for people living in a world littered with evil supernatural forces they ignore at their own peril.

We have our own terms that we use to name someone who has AIDS or who is on ARVs. … So, when you want to go out with a person, and your friends will say, 'No. He's, that one is poison"--like the person is poison; you can't, you can't go, you can't go near him. Or sometimes we call or we name that person, 'Oh that one is using units,' you know.