The politics of exposure

The arts of healing in the practice of bungoma are applied above all to relationships between persons, whether tangible flesh-and- blood or of other intangible kinds such as witches, emadloti (ancestors), zombies, emandzawe, or other ‘forces’ with apparent person-like agency, such as actual persons acting under the influence, or with the protection, of muti. Persons, in this sense, have intentionality and are believed to possess effective causal agency and, therefore, have ‘power’, emandla and presence, isithunzi.

If we may take a ‘market approach’ to healing, as I suggest in chapters 6 and 7, we may also take a ‘political approach’ to the influence of people in a social context that also includes other person-like agents. In this context people understand themselves to be exposed to other persons as active agents or as patients and victims. Since the patient is also a victim, and because the patient of the sangoma can also learn to be an active agent in control of others through the knowledge of bungoma, there is necessarily an implicit politics (in the broad anthropological sense) that underlies these roles and their relationships. By examining the problems that emerge from the micro-scale of social order we can, perhaps, create a picture of the environment in which the healer acts.

I have emphasised the importance of the ‘small-town’ environment in understanding how bungoma works in an otherwise ‘modern’ society such as South Africa. Here I explore the political culture of this small-town environment in order to provide the basis for understanding how persons interact in daily life and therefore to show how the ordinary politics of daily life sets up the categories of conflict in terms of which divination and healing therapies comprehend the kinds of conflicts and injuries that the ‘exposed being’ experiences.

Towards an analysis of local-level

political culture Anthropology and African Studies scholars (as well as political activists) have long resisted the idea that there may be different cultural bases to African political and social systems, preferring, instead, to rely on political concepts derived from European theory and experience. This chapter takes the risk of suggesting that there are indeed definable differences – specifically cultural differences – for political thought and action in local-level ‘African’ politics.