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Drawing upon literature from Australia, Canada, England, India, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States this article offers an alternative framework for the study of Commissions of Inquiry. Conventional understandings of such inquiries as policy‐making instruments of Government fail to grasp the significance of their political form. A reading which stresses the symbolic and ritual aspects of their work and analyses the forms of communication which are organized through public inquiries provides a better framework for grasping the place of these institutions in the reproduction of State power. This article argues that public inquiries derive authority from their distinctive legal, social, and epistemological status. The work of such inquiries can be characterized as ‘reckoning schemes of legitimation’, and this work structures political discourse in three phases: investigative, persuasive, and archival. The abiding significance of Commissions lies not simply in the investigation of facts and the recommendation of policy, but in the elaboration of the ‘idea of the state’. Such schemes of legitimation serve in constituting a realm of discourse through which collective action vis‐à‐vis Society by those who act in the name of the State becomes thinkable, and thereby organizable.

On the basis of field research in Soweto, South Africa, since 1990, this paper reports that witchcraft is commonly thought to be increasing as a direct result of the transition to democracy. This paper begins an examination of the question of witchcraft, violence, and democracy in Soweto by presenting three dialogues on witchcraft and the state: with a man afflicted by witchcraft, a traditional healer, and the mayor of Soweto. Its aim is to uncovered the structure of plausibility within which questions concerning the purpose of power in a democratic state are being framed and answered in a context where witches are a vital and terrifying feature of everyday life. RésuméRésumé Sorcellerie, violence et démocratie dans la Nouvelle Afrique du Sud. -À partir d'enquêtes de terrain réalisées à Soweto, en Afrique du Sud, depuis 1990, cet article entend souligner le fait que la pratique de la sorcellerie se développe au fur et à mesure que se met en place le processus de transition démocratique. L'auteur confronte les problèmes de sorcellerie, de violence et de démocratie qui se posent à Soweto ; puis il présente trois dialogues faisant état des relations entre la sorcellerie et l'État : un dialogue avec un homme ensorcelé, un avec un guérisseur traditionnel, et un autre avec le maire de Soweto. Le but de cet article est d'examiner la structure argumentative à l'intérieur de laquelle les questions concernant la nature du pouvoir dans un État démocratique sont énoncées et débattues, ceci dans un contexte où les sorciers représentent un aspect à la fois vital et terrifiant de la vie quotidienne.

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