Citation

Onyijen KO. Australas. Rev. Afr. Stud. 2021; 41(1): 127-140.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific)

DOI

10.22160/22035184/ARAS-2020-41-1-/127-140

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Witchcraft, the use of magical or mystical powers to cause harm and influence people negatively, and African philosophy, an understanding of the attitudes behind the ways of thinking and actions in the life situations of African people, have long been discussed in African philosophical and socio-cultural discourses. Studies of Phaswane Mpe's novel Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001) have focused on thematic preoccupations such as death, prostitution, betrayal, HIV/AIDS, violence, migration from rural to urban areas, and racism, without giving adequate attention to the cultural issue of witchcraft, as this article does. We adopt new historicism as a critical approach to understand the context of the novel as it addresses the cultural concerns of the society that produces it. The operations of witchcraft in South African society, Mpe's fictional setting, is exposed as the author shows that Refentsé, a character in the novel, dies through suicide, suspected to have been manipulated by his mother using witchcraft powers. Tshepo, another character, also dies through lightning suspected to have been manipulated by a witch. Thus, witchcraft persists as a cultural phenomenon in the socio-cultural context of post-apartheid South Africa, as fictionalised in Mpe's imagined Southern Africa. © 2021, Australasian Review of African Studies. All Rights Reserved.

Language: en