Medicine Murder in Colonial Lesotho
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
978-0-7486-2284-9 (ISBN)
Medicine murder involved the cutting of body parts from victims, usually while they were still alive, to be used for the preparation of medicines intended to enhance the power of the perpetrators. A ‘very startling’ increase in cases of medicine murder apparently took place in Basutoland (now Lesotho), in southern Africa, in the late 1940s and the early 1950s. It gave rise to a dramatic crisis of late colonial rule. Was this increase a real one? If so, why did it happen? How far does it explain the crisis? What other factors contributed? This book offers some comprehensive answers to these difficult, complex and controversial questions and a highly readable analysis of how the crisis arose and of how it fell away. The authors draw sensitively and critically on many different and often conflicting sources of evidence.
Colin Murray has a background in anthropology and intensive experience of field research over many years in Lesotho and the Free State (South Africa). He recently retired as Professor of African Sociology at the University of Manchester. Peter Sanders served as an administrative officer in Basutoland (now Lesotho) from 1961 to 1966. He wrote a biography of Moshoeshoe (1975) and, with Mosebi Damane, an edited translation of the praise poems of the Basotho chiefs (1974).
Maps Tables, Figure and Graphs Photographs Preface Note on names, orthography and pronunciation AbbreviationsINTRODUCTION 1 A defining moment 1 Official and popular reaction 4 Key questions 8 Investigating medicine murder 11 ‘Ritual murder’: the potential for broader study 16Part I MEDICINE MURDER: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND, POLITICAL CONTEXT AND CASE STUDIESCHAPTER 1 Basutoland: ‘a very prickly hedgehog’ 20 A policy of benign neglect 21 Economic failure and chiefly abuse 30 The Pim Report 38 The Khubelu reforms of 1938 41 The Treasury reforms of 1946 46 Disputes over the succession 51 CASE STUDY ONE The case of the cobbler’s head: Morija, 1945 68 ‘A migratory body’ 68 The investigation 72 The preparatory examination and the trial 77 The judgement 83 Discords 89 CHAPTER 2 Medicine murder: belief and incidence 97 Sesotho beliefs in medicine 98 Early evidence of medicine murder 107 The incidence of medicine murder: ‘a very startling increase’? 109 CASE STUDY TWO ‘The chiefs of today have turned against the people’: Koma-Koma, 1948 128 ‘Something going on in this village’ 130 The investigation and the preparatory examination 137 The High Court trial and the judgement 140 Struggles in the Makhabane chieftainship 145 Allegations of police misconduct 147 The failure of appeal 156 CHAPTER 3 Medicine murder: the debates of the late 1940s 161 ‘This country is … overcast with a terrible cloud’ 162 Chiefs, politicians and police 165 The High Commissioner, the chieftainship and the question of
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 11.5.2005 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | International African Library |
| Verlagsort | Edinburgh |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 156 x 234 mm |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918) |
| Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte | |
| Recht / Steuern ► Strafrecht ► Kriminologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-7486-2284-5 / 0748622845 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-7486-2284-9 / 9780748622849 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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