Answer: In his historical preface, Noah explains how South African Christianity combines the colonizers’ religion with traditional beliefs. In South Africa, traditional shamans remain more common than Western doctors, and witchcraft cases frequently go to court, like when someone gets killed by lightning and an enemy of theirs gets charged with murder by witchcraft. Just as Trevor’s mother combines traditional beliefs with Christianity, South Africans do not see a contradiction between Western and indigenous beliefs about crime, punishment, and social life—unlike the apartheid government.
