South Africa # 18-Jealousy.

In South Africa # 1, I discussed the nearly universal belief in witches and witchcraft found in people living in rural areas. Like American and European witches of the 18th and early 19th centuries, African witches are so frightening to people that believe in them, because witches can never be positively or negatively identified. You can't identify a witch just by looking at them. A person may be a witch themselves and not even know it. The source of witches and witchcraft was always described to me as being jealousy. Tswana mythology does not include a hell or other place of punishment. Instead, a person's jealousy contains the possibility to release a hell on earth, by providing a conduit for evil forces to harm people. The witch is not satisfied with his or her own life, and wishes to destroy the lives of others out of spite. Hey, isn't this the same reason that the U.S. and U.K. governments give to explain the rise of Islamic terrorism? Do they really hate us because they are jealous of our freedom, (less and less to be jealous of every day) or is it possibly the hundreds of years of invasions, occupations, bombings, support for cruel despots, and Cold War fuckery? Just asking. Everyone experiences twinges of jealousy from time to time. In my scruffy-misanthrope art school days in Chicago, I used to look at the well scrubbed happy couples on the train and grind my teeth down to stumps. I never once thought that any of them would have loved to be, like me, on their way to draw naked women all day. This is the poison of jealousy-you only see your own self pity. My friends in South Africa are haunted not only by the idea that their friends, family, neighbors, or children may be witches, but that they may be witches themselves. This fear of the supernatural has mixed with the fear of HIV, with horrific results (See South Africa # 5.) Many traditional societies blame illnesses on witchcraft, and the Tswanas are no different. The untimely and seemingly unexplained deaths due to HIV feed the belief in witchcraft, by providing "evidence" of evil at work. As a consequence, superstitions long thought to be laughable have been given new life. Today's picture concerns the potential for evil (the coal-black head with the snake eyes) that many Africans believe exists in everyone. The portrait on the left is of my friend Itumeleng Khorae. And no, he is not a witch, just devilishly good looking.