Exploring Muti Murder and the Supernatural in Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City: The Case for (Magical) Realism

This study evaluated the extent to which representations of muti magic and other supernatural elements in Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City (2010) adhere to conventions of realism or magical realism. It questioned the appropriateness of Western genre categories and cosmologies to understanding muti murder and supernatural elements in African fiction. While asserting that Zoo City is a magical realist text, the study juxtaposed Western-led realism with what could be Bantu realism, where myth concepts such as shavi spirits and muti murder are considered to have real-life supernatural effects. Muti murders are criminal actions under southern African states’ laws, committed because of a cultural belief that they have believable supernatural effects—the novel interrogates this belief. This study was text-based and explorative; qualitative and hermeneutic methods were applied. Postcolonial theory served as a theoretical framework to understanding the diverse beliefs such as the conflict between Western scientific thought and African supernatural cosmologies. Often Western-led scientific thought believes that the human body has no connection with the supernatural, which is contrary to African supernatural cosmologies that hold that the supernatural and the natural exist interdependently; thus representations of muti murder in the text have a potential to be read as realistic according to Bantu cosmology. This study suggests that because of the representations of shavi spirits and muti murder, Zoo City should be read as a faith-based magical realist text—this approach helps to achieve the text’s objectives.