Well that's a relief.
It was a horribly badly-drafted piece of legislation, which failed to define terms and would have created endless confusion had it become law.
It was a horribly badly-drafted piece of legislation, which failed to define terms and would have created endless confusion had it become law.
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While witchcraft allegations have certainly led to a lot of violence, hasty legislation and imprecise definitions will not help to solve the problem.
3 comments:
...where is this occuring?
Thank goodness for that. The entire South African Pagan community has been campaigning against this bill since it started.
Legislating against the victims of violence seems to me to be condoning the perpetration of the violence; and it's more likely to encourage the persecutors to continue.
It's like banning Judaism because of anti-Semitic violence.
Yvonne,
The aim was to protect the victims, but the definitions were inadequate, and the whole thing had not been thought through. For example, here are two of the deifnitions:
"Witchcraft" means the secret use of muti, zombies, spells, spirits, magic powders, water, mixtures, etc, by any person with the purpose of causing harm, damage, sickness to others or their property.
"Wizard"means any person who secretly solicit or uses muti, zombies, spells, spirits, magic powders, water, mixtures, baboons, etc. for the purposes of causing harm, damage or suffering to another.
But nowhere, for example, are "zombies" defined.
If you search my blog for "Mpumalanga witchcraft" you can see the draft. And "wizard" is a term used mainly by the tabloid press, which has such interesting headlines as "Zombie ate my soap".
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