This chapter attempts in brief to rethink the history of magic by considering its relations with otherness. Otherness is conceived of as a relative and dynamic category, generated as the necessary result of claims to truth. The long history of the term 'magic' is characterised throughout by attempts to other it. The chapter pauses on several key moments in this history, ancient and medieval, before considering in slightly more detail the consequences of the Protestant Reformation for the imposition of a modern conception of magic. The rise of science and discourses of objectivity provide impetus for the modern othering of magic, and literature’s role in this process is examined through a focus on the rise of realism. The chapter then shows how the breakdown of consensus about the nature of reality in the early twentieth century leads to new forms of artistic expression, central among which is magical realism. It argues that throughout this long history magic, in a variety of forms, has displayed an extraordinary resilience, retaining its capacity to express important aspects of experience, society and meaning.

Magical realism is a concept that has proved stubbornly resistant to processes of naming and definition. In the narrow sense in which the term is used by literary critics, magical realism refers to a mode or a style – sometimes a genre – of writing in which magical elements are presented alongside realistic ones as if there were no difference of kind between them. A magical realist text will treat supernatural occurrences as if they were perfectly natural. It will incorporate, without surprise, fantastic elements into the realm of history and objective materiality.

South African history is characterized by multiple colonialisms and migrations which were different in the ways they operated and in their impact on the societies and cultures of the region. The large-scale movement of people, the rise and fall of polities, the logic of imperial control by direct and indirect means, and the history of resistance against such control – all were present before the arrival of European settlers in the seventeenth century. Dutch, French and German settlers and their descendants, who over time came to speak Dutch in its creolized local form, Afrikaans, were, in 1806, effectively recolonized by Britain. Large numbers of slaves were imported over centuries from other parts of Africa, Madagascar, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, adding to the mix. The advent of self-rule in 1910, the triumph of the National Party in 1948, or the declaration of the republic in 1961, moments which elsewhere might be iconically postcolonial, in South Africa meant the entrenchment of white power and an extension of internal colonial-style control and exploitation. South Africa thus presents a particular set of challenges to those seeking to describe it as ‘postcolonial’.

The variegated nature of South African colonialism is evident in its literatures. Writing in English and Afrikaans exhibits features similar to those of the literatures of other settler countries, for example in their transactions with European literary traditions, or in a preoccupation with the relations between identity and landscape. But South Africa differs dramatically from other settler colonies in that its settlers never outnumbered its indigenous inhabitants.

Early European settlement of South Africa was a piecemeal affair. The Portuguese were the first to round the Cape in the late fifteenth century, leaving us as reminders of their presence a number of stone crosses and a canto of Camoens’s epic poem, The Lusiads. The Dutch Vereenigde Oost- Indische Compagnie (VOC), established a permanent outpost in the region in 1652, intending to restock ships plying the lucrative trade between Europe and the East. Within a decade, Company servants had become full-time farmers, and these early settlers had entered into conflict with the indigenous Khoikhoi. A trickle of Dutch and German immigrants was bolstered in 1688 by the arrival of French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in Europe. From 1658, slaves were imported from both coasts of Africa, Madagascar, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. In 1806 the British took final control of the Cape, fearing its strategic position might be used against them by Napoleon. Organized migration from Britain followed in the 1820s, and, after diamonds and gold were discovered in the second half of the century, the region saw a steady influx of mostly British and Commonwealth immigrants. South African settlers thus fell largely into two groups: English speakers, most of whom maintained strong ties with Britain and other parts of its empire; and those who spoke Dutch, or a version of it, a group of mixed origins whose affiliations with Europe were largely severed by the nature of their migration, and by later recolonization by Britain.