“My House is Protected by a Dragon”

White South Africans, magic and sacred spaces in post-apartheid Cape Town

Authors

• Annika Teppo University of Helsinki

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.v34i1.116493

Abstract

Until the end of apartheid, White South Africans were solely presented as Christians, with other religious practices all but forbidden to them. Since the negotiated revolution of 1994, the new liberal constitution has guaranteed religious freedom to all, with the global New Religious Movements gaining popularity. Tens of thousands of White South Africans have seized the opportunity to explore charismatic churches, New Age-practices as well as traditional African religions, while the popularity of traditional Christianity has dropped. The informants of this research are White South Africans from Cape Town,  neopagans who practice Wiccan witchcraft and sangomas who practice traditional African religion. In South Africa, Whites are seldom regarded as practitioners of witchcraft or magic. Yet there are thousands of Whites who believe in and practice both, and create their own sacred spaces within the urban spaces which were previously subjected to rules and regulations of racialised social engineering. This article examines how witchcraft, magic and new global religions meet in the conjunctions of global and local, where new concerns arise and where new heterotopias and spatial practices are established as answers to White neopagans’ anxieties about spiritual insecurity and racial boundaries. The places where these sacred urban spaces are created are at homes, in public spaces, and on the Internet.

Keywords: African religion, Cape Town, magic, sacred spaces, post-apartheid urban space, White South Africans, Wicca, witchcraft