Traditional healers of Southern Africa
They fulfil different social and political roles in the community like divination, healing physical, emotional, and spiritual illnesses, directing birth or death rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witchcraft and narrating the history, cosmology, and concepts of their tradition.
There are two main types of traditional healers within the Nguni, Sotho, and Tsonga societies of Southern Africa: the diviner (sangoma) and the herbalist (inyanga).
These healers are effectively South African shamans who are highly revered and respected in a society where illness is thought to be caused by witchcraft, pollution (contact with impure objects or occurrences) or through neglect of the ancestors.
[4] For harmony between the living and the dead, vital for a trouble-free life, traditional healers believe that the ancestors must be shown respect through ritual and animal sacrifice.
A similar term, amafufunyana refers to claims of demonic possession due to members of the Xhosa people exhibiting aberrant behaviour and psychological concerns.
[6] In modern times, colonialism, urbanisation, apartheid and transculturation have blurred the distinction between the two and traditional healers tend to practice both arts.
[12][13] Sangomas perform a holistic and symbolic form of healing by drawing on the embedded beliefs of the Bantu peoples in South Africa, who believe that ancestors in the afterlife guide and protect the living.
[24] A sangoma's goal in healing is to establish a balanced and harmless relationship between the afflicted patient and the spirits that are causing their illness or problem.
[5] This is generally performed through divination (throwing the bones or ancestral channelling), purification rituals, or animal sacrifice to appease the spirits through the atonement.
The patient or diviner throws bones on the floor, which may include animal vertebrae, dominoes, dice, coins, shells and stones, each with a specific significance to human life.
[31] Over 300 species of plants have been identified as having psychoactive healing effects on the nervous system, many of which need further cultural and scientific study[32] In South African English and Afrikaans, the word muthi is sometimes used as a slang term for medicine in general.
The largest proportion of medicinal species collected belongs to the family Asteraceae (such as Calendula[34]) followed by Fabaceae (such as the butterfly pea plant[35]), and Euphorbiaceae (such as Phyllanthus Muellerianus[36]).
Purification practices include bathing, vomiting, steaming, nasal ingestion, enemas, and cuttings:[26] An experienced inyanga/sangoma will generally seek the guidance of an ancestral spirit before embarking to find and collect muthi.
The training involves learning humility to the ancestors, purification through steaming, washing in the blood of sacrificed animals, and the use of muthi, medicines with spiritual significance.
[43] This is part of the cleansing process to prepare the healer for a life's work of dedication to healing and the intense experiences of training tend to earn a deeply entrenched place in the sangoma's memory.
[45] The process can vary in length, with some sources suggesting a minimum duration of nine months to fully explore and develop the abilities and knowledge of an initiate.
[47] A similar term, Amafufunyana refers to claims of demonic possession due to members of the Xhosa people exhibiting aberrant behaviour and psychological concerns.
During the early hours of the morning the trainee is required to sweep the yard, wash their clothing and bath in the river, only returning home when they are dry.
On 23 March 2010 the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development approved a South African Law Reform Commission project to review witchcraft legislation.
[67] Dr Theodore Petrus, who completed a doctoral thesis on witchcraft-related crime in 2009,[68] was invited to become part of an advisory committee to assist in the review.
[71][72] Several white sangomas, interviewed by The Big Issue in 2010, claimed that they have been welcomed by the black community in South Africa, aside from isolated experiences of hostility.
[31] Well-known contributions to world medicine from South African herbal remedies include aloe, buchu and devil's claw.
[76] Public health specialists are now enlisting sangomas in the fight, not only against the spread of HIV/AIDS, but also diarrhoea and pneumonia, which are major causes of death in rural areas, especially in children.
[7][77] In the past decade, the role of traditional healers has become important in fighting the impact of HIV and treating people infected with the virus before they advance to a point where they require (or can obtain) anti-retroviral drugs.
[79] Repeated use of the same razor blade to make incisions for muthi as well as wielding power over patients to sexually assault them, sometimes dressed up as ritual, carries HIV transmission risks.
[81] While many traditional healers positively contribute toward the healing process, the industry has been exploited for financial gain by charlatans who have not undergone training, sometimes called plastic shamans.
Scammers commonly advertise through flyers and posters plastered on lampposts in streets throughout South Africa, especially in densely populated urban areas.
[83] The advertisements claim the ability to bring back lost lovers, potions to enlarge penises and spells that will make people rich or provide them with luck.
[82] Significant amounts of money have been lost in these scams[84][85][86][87] and women seeking abortions through these unregulated services have suffered damage to their reproductive organs, impacting their ability to conceive in the future.
[87]Dr Motlalepula Matsabisa, director of the Medical Research Council's Indigenous Knowledge Unit, says there appears to be many fake traditional healers around, however because of a lack of regulation, they go unchecked and explains that if anyone can bring about good luck and predict lotto numbers, they would not be poor themselves.
