Witchcraft and Statecraft

Liberal Democracy in Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID7538950
AuthorsNelson Tebbe (0000-0003-4608-007X, Cornell University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume96
Pages183-236
Publication date2018-01-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
PublisherCenter for Open Science (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.31228/osf.io/synmx
OpenAlexW186258601
LanguageEN
Citations received7

96 Georgetown Law Journal 183 (2007)This Article addresses the prospects of liberal democracy in non-Western societies. It focuses on South Africa, one of the newest and most admired liberal democracies, and in particular on its efforts to recognize indigenous African traditions surrounding witchcraft and related occult practices. In 2004, Parliament passed a law that purports to regulate certain occult practitioners called traditional healers. Today, lawmakers are under pressure to go further and criminalize the practice of witchcraft itself. This Article presses two arguments. First, it contends that the 2004 statute is compatible with liberal principles of equal citizenship and the rule of law. Second, it warns against outlawing witchcraft as such. Subjecting suspected sorcerers to criminal punishment based on governmental determinations of guilt that many will perceive to be unprincipled would work too much damage to individual autonomy and national unity, among other values. These arguments are designed to contribute to a wider discussion about the capacity of liberalism to respond to the global resurgence of religious traditionalism, especially in countries where traditionalists may comprise a large majority of the citizenry

Autonomy · Citizenship · Democracy · Indigenous · Liberal democracy · Liberalism · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Punishment (psychology · Rule of law · Sociology · Statute · African cultural and philosophical studies · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies

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