Koldovstvo v zalah suda. Njekotoryje rjefljeksii o postkolonialnoj Afrikje

Today witchcraft and occult practices are a significant part of social interactions, economic and political processes in Africa. The theoretical basis of the given article is ideas of modern ethnologists and anthropologists who consider magic and witchcraft as a social system regulating tension and maintaining balance in post-colonial African societies. The starting point is the thesis about multiplicity of modernization models in contemporary societies, which allows to determinewitchcraft and magic as an integral part of some modernizations. Thus witchcraft appears not merely as a relic of the past, but mostly as a volatile paradigm, the content of which may vary and take on other configurations while remaining effective force in the postcolonial society. In the article some judicial cases and political phenomena of modern African states are used as arguments in order to prove the efficacy of witchcraft as part of discourse production in opposition press and in oral rumors and gossip and as a kind of weapon in social and political confrontation between official authorities and society.