Special Report Transcript Episode 11, Section 4, Time 25:49

But what precisely is a witch? And what do they do that people fear them so? // Although we are speaking of one province here each area has got a large number of certain ethnic groups. If you take Northern Sotho speaking people many people were accused of having caused lightning, whereas if you go to a place such as Venda it was perhaps the traditional witchcraft. In other words, somebody is accused of having killed a certain person through witch craft practices, not necessarily lightning. Some areas of Venda also adopted this issue of zombies. Now it is mostly in Northern Sotho speaking areas where you find that the zombie issue played a very important role. But then of course, Western Venda and some parts of Ngiyani also fell into that category. In other words, very often if a person is wealthy, a person such as a farmer, people began to question, why is he doing so well on this farm? Who is working on his farm? So very often out of jealousy somebody will spread the gossip that when he was passing there one night he heard so many voices on the farm, and said those must be zombies brought onto the farm by the owner of the farm. And just because of that the owner of the farm may be forced to flee from the area or may be killed if he’s not lucky.

Notes: Prof Victor Ralushai

References: there are no references for this transcript