Connecting Bodies: Re-examining Ritual Murder in Venda

Ritual murder in the Venda region of South Africa is both real and imagined; it is spoken about, ‘real’ cases are identified by officials and the lay public, and the act of ritual murder articulates wider tensions that persist within this region post-Apartheid. This thesis will show that people in Venda talk about ritualized murder in a way which speaks to wider socio-economic, gendered, class, ethnic-national and global conceptualizations and practices and how they saw themselves fitting in to these processes. Drawing on Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margret Lock’s (1987) “three bodies” framework, in this thesis I will examine discourses and practices about ritual murder as a way to understand the interplay between the individual, social, and political spheres of organization.