Witchcraft, trust, and reciprocity among Mozambican refugees and their South African hosts in a Lowveld village

We know a great deal about the harassment and harsh treatment they suffer at the hands of mainly black South Africans. We know very little of the experience of rural-based refugees and immigrants.

Also, research about immigrants tends to focus on their experiences to the exclusion of the everyday lives of their hosts. In this paper I turn the spotlight on rural-based refugees in a South African village. In addition to examining their relationship with their hosts, I discuss relationships within the two communities and how they are shaped by internal factors such as belief in witchcraft, and external ones such as government policies and socio-economic circumstances.