Considering kinship/gender as the prime mode of production of persons, I see these as the embodiment of social relations that can

be also put in circulation as morally and emotionally invested objects that transfer the properties of persons to other persons. These objects are concretions of society and history, vessels of relations and social memory. Yet, as social relations are necessarily contradictory, the tensions within, difficulties and failures to build a sociality may e plain how in many parts of !ub"!aharan #frica witchcraft are understood as the ever"present $dark side of kinship% and conviviality. This is structural anomie presupposed by the forms of solidarity are perceived to be increasingly manifesting in post"colonial #frica, with socialities undergoing new forms of stress. In the supposedly globali&ing world, capital is said to become the universally dominant form of social relation. #frica is seen as one of several regions in the $'lobal !outh% where capitalist penetration encounters communal, person"centred socialities. The characteristic informal networks of social interaction and e change that permeate all structures inform what #fricanist political scientist '(ran )yd*n has called an $economy of affection%. In such a system, $the production of persons% as embodied social relations has not yielded to an economy +capitalist or socialist, based on $the production of things% as socially detached +alienated, objects of accumulation and circulation of wealth +all material and immaterial social products become commodities- goods, labour, persons, whose value emerges in e change yet is $fetishistically% imagined as intrinsic, obscuring its origin in human social labour. The determinant role of the commodity and money as the vessels of social relations in capitalism comes precisely from its invisibili&ing alienation from production and producers- labour and persons. Instead of the alienation in commodity fetishism, in person"centred communal systems most forms of transactions +interactions, communications, e changes, etc., outside and many times inside of market spheres of e change may be morally charged and emotionally invested. This might be particularly true of those #frican societies also formally characteri&ed as $gift economies%. These are systems of $delayed"return% of value as produced by the labour of persons. They make possible the deliberate e.uation of persons +or parts of persons, with their labour, as it is transferred to objects that circulate as gifts. These are given in e pectation of forming enduring personal bonds. /bjects are not alienated from subjects. 0ealth is the visible accumulation of social relations. Yet this social inalienability of person"centred wealth so long enduring in #frica must not be romantically understood as a primitive communist paradise. It actually makes more salient the fact that social capital is based on the accumulation of persons +as labourers, through many morally ambivalent forms of social reproduction and recruitment +polygamy and child fostering, con.uest and warfare, servitude and enslavement, etc., managed by different hierarchical and asymmetrical distributions of power +gender, age, ethnic and even class stratifications, and correspondent allocation of resources +land, water, game, technologies,.

In a social landscape of economic and political disorder where #frican societies are captured by the neoliberal capitalism of globali&ation, the informal, interpersonal economies of affection that have provided enduring social security also incorporate $occult% and $shadow% economies. 1aily life is permeated by gender, transgenerational, racial, ethnic, religious, economic conflicts, violence and warfare, political corruption, migrant labour, unemployment, urbani&ation that rescales and stretches local ties over their capacity to reciprocate, disease +prominently )I2"#I1!,, the se trade, drug, arm +weapons, and human trafficking, etc. 3ut everyday life also sees a perceived surge in witchcraft accusations circulated by resentful gossip and rumours about illicitly obtained success and ill"obtained material wealth. #ncestors, spirits, and the 1evil of the missionaries are said to transfer power +in the form of money, commodities and influence, to the malicious living through tributes and sacrifices +killings and murders, of person"charged objects and bodily substances +blood, fat, and parts +organs, members, etc.,. 4ersonal and community violence is also enacted in sorcery attacks and reacted by anti"witchcraft legislation and atrocious witch hunts that #frican political institutions and organi&ations have not failed to take seriously, as no one doubts its reality and ordinariness. If the tensions e pressed in witchcraft accusations during pre"colonial times were the dark side of kinship as a traditional and long enduring mode of producing sociality, recent manifestations of witchcraft in social e changes are the embodiment of a historical consciousness. 0itchcraft is the social memory of colonialism, neo" colonialism, #partheid, $underdevelopment%, neoliberalism, and other forms of #frican modernity. Yet if witchcraft accusations are the product of oppression, despair, and ine.uality under conditions of globali&ation, it must be remembered that witchcraft does entail practices of healing and conflict resolution, social reparation and redistribution. )owever distorted, the #frican economies of affection still transfer solidarity, hope and security from person to person.