Mystery there certainly is, but not of the Harry Potter kind. Most South Africans believe in witches but they fear the misery they inflict. It is not simply a matter of a curse and suffering seven years of bad sex, unpleasant as that certainly is, but of the way a belief in witches ensures social control and conformity, and requires exile and even death as the ultimate form of elimination. Sakkie Niehaus' Witchcraft, Power and Politics is the most important book yet published on witchcraft. It does not lend itself to simple summaries and bullet-proof conclusions. And so I choose to address two themes that seem to me to bring out the best in the book. The first has to do with witchcraft as a cultural script and the second with witchcraft as a weapon of the weak. Pluto, London and David Philip, Cape Town, 2001.