Abstract

In this article, we take the postcolonial state as a complex metaphysical and social landscape characterised by the interplay of forces generated from the cultural ripples of the encounter of the postcolonial world with Western modernity. This is done by employing the Diesel N'anga story from Zimbabwe to locate the place of the occult in the whole postcolonial social and political unfolding in Africa. We argue that embedded within African multiple modernities is a unique worldview – a cognitive, perceptual, and affective map – that Western science, despite all its effort, has not managed to supplant. At the heart of this worldview is the belief in the existence and effectiveness of occult forces. Further, we appropriate Hegelian thought to argue that the proliferation of occult beliefs and practices is a reminder that history and philosophy should neither be predictive nor prescriptive but should aim to understand society in its specificities.