The Politics of Evil: Magic, State Power and the Political Imagination in South Africa

The Politics of Evil provides a new interpretation of modern South African history, and a fresh approach to the study of power, culture and resistance in the modern world. Encompassing all of South Africa’s history in his analysis, Clifton Crais examines the formation of an authoritarian political order and the complex ways people understood and resisted the colonial state. He explores state formation as a cultural and political process and as a moral problem, and he looks at indigenous concepts of power, authority and evil: how they shaped cross-cultural encounters and the making of a colonial order. He reveals how victims of apartheid understood the triumph of this evil in their lives as they elaborated rich, sometimes violent visions of a world free of colonial oppression and white supremacy. Crais ends with the contemporary political transition, the challenges to creating a durable democracy, and the persistence of evil in South Africa.