This article explores some of the social and cultural factors that have undermined effective treatment and care for persons living with AIDS in South Africa. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bushbuckridge, I observe that AIDS stigma has been both pervasive and intense. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, I argue that the association of AIDS with...

This article explores continuities and changes between two forms of political mobilisation in the Bushbuckridge region of South Africa: violent attacks on alleged witches by young men during the late 1980s, and the punishment of thieves and rapists by anti-crime squads since 2009. I suggest that within local knowledge witches, thieves and rapists have important aff...

During 2008, rumours about revolting incestuous encounters between sons and their mothers circulated in the Bushbuckridge municipality of the South African lowveld. This article views these rumours as expressing moral panic, paying particular attention to the historical contexts of their emergence and circulation, and to their temporal orientation. I locate these r...

In this article I show how a brief history of the use of an exceptionally wide variety of potions with assumed mystical effects by football teams in the Bushbuckridge area of South Africa provides a unique vantage point for understanding men's experiences of political and economic transformations associated with the homeland system. Historically, the advent of foot...

In Bushbuckridge, South Africa, persons receiving Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment (HAART) for AIDS often recounted their experiences of vivid, frightening dreams. Drawing on the results of long-term fieldwork and on biographical interviews, I explore the meanings of these dreams in local discourses. Contrary to the biomedical fraternity, which depicted such ...

The press has, from time to time, reported on the occurrence of episodes of witchcraft-related violence in the northeast of South Africa. Social analysts often attribute witchcraft beliefs and accusations to the persistence of ‘traditional’ beliefs in the contemporary world. This article challenges such interpretations and asks whether it is possible to see witchcr...