Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

50 ENVY AND BLACK MAGIC
ability to drive a car, to find work in a town or to dance particularly well.
Very often complex jealousies were at work, involving sexual and
economic motives. Causes of envy mentioned by Krige are position,
prestige, personal attractiveness, bride prices, the distribution of possessions,
and the yield from herds of cattle. 24
The whole of pre-scientific literature, as for example proverbs, concerning
the phenomenon of envy, invariably lays stress on social proximity
between the envious man and the object of his envy. This factor is
also apparent from Krige's material. Not only are relatives and neighbours
those most often involved, but it is regarded as exceptionally
difficult to bewitch a stranger with any success. The Lovedu believe that
only a mother can never harm her children with witchcraft, just as they
can never harm her. And this is precisely the very relationship in which
envy would appear least probable.
Exaggerated modesty, the understatement so typical of the Englishman,
which occurs in Chinese culture too, is also a convention of the
Lovedu. When a man comes back from a visit to another district, the
neighbours greet him with the question: 'What do they eat over there?'
or, betraying envy: 'What are they keeping from us, the people you've
been with?' To which the invariable answer is: 'They're just about
starving' -even when they have everything in plenty and have shown
regal hospitality. It is even feared that to be over-zealous will arouse
suspicions that a man is striving for success: if one passes a field where a
Lovedu man or woman is working and remarks: 'Working hard, eh?'
they will always answer: 'We're hardly working at all. ,25
A bright child who matures early is regarded by the Lovedu as a future
witch. Life is spent in perpetual fear of envy. Possessions bring no
prestige. 26 And there is no socio-economic stratification in Lovedu
society. The culture-that is, the total system of norms-of this Bantu
tribe shows deeply rooted inhibitions of all kinds which can be traced
back directly to intensive mutual envy, and which plainly show, too, how
they specifically restrict development. 27
24 Op. cit. pp. 264 ff.
25 Op. cit. p. 18.
26 Op. cit. p. 290.
27 Op. cit.p. 286.