Medicine Murder in Colonial Lesotho : : The Anatomy of a Moral Crisis / / Colin Murray, Peter Sanders.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2013-2000
• VerfasserIn: Murray, Colin,; Sanders, Peter,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: International African Library : IAL
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (494 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF MAPS -- LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND GRAPHS -- NOTE ON PHOTOGRAPHS -- PREFACE -- NOTE ON NAMES, ORTHOGRAPHY AND PRONUNCIATION -- ABBREVIATIONS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART I MEDICINE MURDER: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND, POLITICAL CONTEXT AND CASE STUDIES -- 1 BASUTOLAND: 'A VERY PRICKLY HEDGEHOG' -- Case Study 1 THE CASE OF THE COBBLER'S HEAD: MORIJA, 1945 -- 2 MEDICINE MURDER: BELIEF AND INCIDENCE -- Case Study 2 'THE CHIEFS OF TODAY HAVE TURNED AGAINST THE PEOPLE': KOMA-KOMA, 1948 -- 3 MEDICINE MURDER: THE DEBATES OF THE LATE 1940s -- Case Study 3 THE 'BATTLE OF THE MEDICINE HORNS': 'MAMATHE'S, LATE 1940s -- 4 NARRATIVE AND COUNTER-NARRATIVE: EXPLAINING MEDICINE MURDER -- Case Study 4 'A MOST UNSAVOURY STATE OF AFFAIRS': MOKHOTLONG, 1940s-50s -- 5 DIAGNOSES AND RESOLUTIONS: FROM FAILURE TO RECRIMINATION TO SILENCE -- INTERLUDE MEDICINE MURDER AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION -- PART II MEDICINE MURDER: AN ANALYSIS OF PROCESS -- 6 MURDERERS AND THEIR MOTIVES -- 7 PLOTS, MURDERS, MUTILATIONS AND MEDICINE -- 8 POLICE INVESTIGATIONS -- 9 THE JUDICIAL PROCESS -- AFTERMATH -- CONCLUSION -- ADDENDUM: TOWARDSF~EWORKSOF COMPARISON -- APPENDIX -- NOTES -- SOURCES -- INDEX