‘Long-Nosed’ Hybrids? Sharing the Experiences of White Izangoma in Contemporary South Africa

Abstract

This article offers some preliminary insights into the complexities of becoming and being white izangoma in contemporary South Africa. Written from an insider's perspective, it examines the significance of becoming an isangoma,1 and engages with some of the main criticisms of those who oppose white practitioners. It provides a brief description of the making of an isangoma and includes some of the particular challenges to the white initiate (or thwasa). It then goes on to explore the major criticisms of the notion of white izangoma, critically assessing these objections. The article argues that the inevitable traces of ancestral agency in the sangoma experience – its ancestral hybridity – renders every sangoma practitioner hybrid, in the sense of being new, different, and (unless their healing is found ineffective) authentic. Finally, with the essentially healing role of sangoma in mind, the article touches on the potential for expanding the roles of white izangoma as contemporary healers of colonial wounds, as mediators, and as translators between biomedicine and traditional medical practice.

^* The reference to whites as ‘long-nosed’ comes from a local magazine article exploring the issue of white izangoma: P. Masiba, ‘Long-nosed Sangomas’, Bona (2001).

¹ Note: isangoma is the singular form of the Xhosa term for a traditional healer/sangoma, while izangoma is the plural form of the noun.

Notes

^* The reference to whites as ‘long-nosed’ comes from a local magazine article exploring the issue of white izangoma: P. Masiba, ‘Long-nosed Sangomas’, Bona (2001).

¹ Note: isangoma is the singular form of the Xhosa term for a traditional healer/sangoma, while izangoma is the plural form of the noun.

² See M. Hirst, ‘The Healer's Art: Cape Nguni Diviners in the Townships of Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa’ (Ph.D. Thesis, Rhodes University 1990); T. Macallum, White Woman Witchdoctor, the Life of Rae Graham (Johannesburg, Struik Publishers, 1993); W. van Binsbergen, Intercultural Encounters: African and Anthropological Lessons Towards a Philosophy of Interculturality (Berlin/Muenster, Lit Verlag, 2003). In using the label ‘phenomenon’, I by no means suggest that these white experiences of sangoma are, in themselves, particularly special, but merely emphasise that they are popularly still considered unusual.

³ See B.A. Hyma and A. Ramesh, ‘Traditional Medicine: Its Extent and Potential for Incorporation into Modern National Health Care Systems’, in D.R. Phillips and Y. Verhasselt (eds), Health and Development (London; New York, Routledge, 1994). For rare examples from South Africa, see I. Friedman, Achieving Partnerships with Traditional Healers/Sangomas (Johannesburg, National Progressive Primary Health Care Network, 1998); Health Systems Trust, ‘Traditional Healers’, HST Update, 37 (October 1998); S. Leclerc-Madlala, Traditional Medical Practitioners AIDS Training and Support Programme: Final Evaluation Report (Durban, AIDS Foundation of South Africa, 2002).

⁴ S.R. Benatar, ‘An Old Health Care System Gives Place to New’, The Lancet, 349, (1997), pp. 1,537–38; M. Heywood, ‘Drug Access, Patents and Global Health: “Chaffed and Waxed Sufficient”’, Third World Quarterly, 23, 2 (2002), p. 218; S.R. Benatar, ‘South Africa's Transition in a Globalizing World: HIV/AIDS as a Window and a Mirror’, International Affairs, 77, 2 (2001), pp. 356–57; M. Steinberg, A. Kinghorn, N. Söderlund, G. Schierhout and S. Conway, ‘HIV/AIDS – Facts, Figures and the Future’, Health Strategy Review 2000 (Pretoria, Health Systems Trust, 2000).

⁵ A. Case, A. Menendez and C. Ardington, ‘Health Seeking Behaviour in Northern KwaZulu-Natal’, Working Paper 116, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town (2005).

⁶ J.M. Janzen, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992), p. 86.

⁷ Leclerc-Madlala, Traditional Medical Practitioners, p. 9.

⁸ Ibid., p. 25; see also J. Wreford, ‘Ukusebenza nge 'thongo – Working with Spirit: Healing Connections in Contemporary South Africa’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cape Town, 2005) and my various papers on this topic: ‘Negotiating Relationships between Biomedicine and Sangoma: Fundamental Misunderstandings, Avoidable Mistakes’, Working Paper 138, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town (2005); ‘“Sincedisa! – We Can Help!” A Literature Review of Current Practice Involving Traditional African Healers in Biomedical HIV/AIDS Interventions in South Africa’ and ‘Missing Each Other: Problems and Potentials for Collaborative Efforts Between Biomedicine and Traditional Healers in South Africa in the Time of AIDS’, both in Social Dynamics, Special Issue, 31, 2 (December 2005).

⁹ E.C. Green's work has much to say in this regard: ‘Sexually Transmitted Disease, Ethnomedicine and Health Policy in Africa’, Social Science and Medicine, 35, 2 (1992), pp. 121–30; AIDS and STDs in Africa (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1994); and E.C. Green, B. Zokwe, and J. Dupree, ‘The Experience of an AIDS Prevention Program Focused on South African Traditional Healers’, Social Science and Medicine, 40, 4 (1995), pp. 503–15. For izangoma responses to one collaboration, see Leclerc-Madlala, Traditional Medical Practitioners, p. 25.

¹⁰ I use the names that my informants themselves requested. My doctoral thesis encompasses a comprehensive description of some essential elements of becoming an isangoma and has detailed analyses of several arguments touched on in this article, including the question of ancestors, the role or trance, relationships with biomedicine, and popular perceptions of white izangoma.

¹¹ Van Binsbergen, Intercultural Encounters.

¹² This variety is a characteristic reflected in the autobiographical literature on the subject, especially that of white candidates. See for example, N. Arden, African Spirits Speak: A White Woman's Journey into the Healing Tradition of the Sangoma (Vermont, Destiny Books, 1996); D.M. Cumes, Africa in My Bones: A Surgeon's Odyssey into the Spirit World of African Healing (Cape Town, Spearhead, 2004); J. Hall Sangoma: My Odyssey into the Spirit World of Africa (New York, J.P. Tarcher/Puttnam, 1994); Hirst, ‘The Healer's Art’; Macallum, White Woman Witchdoctor.

¹³ J. Wreford, ‘Facilitating Relationships between African Traditional Healing and Western Medicine in South Africa in the Time of AIDS: A Case Study from the Western Cape’, Working Paper 170, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, 2006. Some healers draw a pension or foster grant rather than relying on erratic payments from clients, while their patrons persistently request free treatments, or delayed payments, pleading lack of funds.

¹⁵ Interview with isangoma, Khayelitsha, Cape Town, 13 December 2001.

¹⁴ This is despite the fact that the privately financed facilities available to the whites are infinitely superior to the service to which their black colleagues are subjected at public health clinics and hospitals. The entrenched inequalities of health care in South Africa are stark, and for the impoverished black community, including izangoma, there is little if any choice.

¹⁶ Interview with isangoma R, Cape Town, 10 May 2005.

¹⁷ Interview with Mkansi Mamayile Salva, ‘An Equal Treatment Interview with a Traditional Healer’, Equal Treatment: Newsletter of the Treatment Action Campaign, 15 (May 2005).

¹⁸ This is not to ignore the problems that arise out of the need to translate medical language to the layperson.

¹⁹ An instance of this confusion can be found in Wreford, ‘Negotiating Relationships’, pp. 21–22.

²⁰ A paper describing an example of this approach employed to teach medical students at Groote Schuur Medical School Primary Health Care is planned. For other descriptions see Wreford, ‘Facilitating Relationships’.

²² Interview with isangoma R, Cape Town, 10 May 2005.

²¹ See for example A-I. Berglund, Zulu Thought Patterns and Symbolism (London, Hurst & Co, 1976); V. Buhrmann, Living in Two Worlds (Cape Town, Human and Rousseau, 1984); J.M. Janzen, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992); H. Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine: An Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought and Practice (London/New York, Academic Press, 1977).

²³ Interview with isangoma M, Cape Town, 26 May 2005.

²⁵ Interview with isangoma D, Cape Town, 1 June 2005.

²⁴ Dreams gradually become an integral part of sangoma practice, a tool for the healer to predict the arrival of clients, discover their problems, and determine the remedy. See Berglund, Zulu Thought Patterns; Janzen, Ngoma: Ngubane, Body and Mind, Chapter 6.

²⁶ Although this rule often seems to be waived for those who are already in a relationship, my teacher was convinced that sexual activity during ukuthwasa would, as she put it, ‘only slow down the process’.

²⁷ Interview with isangoma K, Cape Town, 13 June 2005.

³⁰ Interview with isangoma R, Cape Town, 10 May 2005.

²⁸ R. Shweder, Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 38.

²⁹ B.G. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1961); M. West, Bishops and Prophets in a Black City: African Independent Churches in Soweto (Johannesburg/Cape Town, David Philip, 1975).

³¹ N. Mndende, quoted in Masiba, Bona (2001), p. 32.

³² N. Mndende, ‘African Traditional Attitudes to Death and Dying’, CME: Your SA Journal of CPD, 15, 7 (1997), pp. 793–98; N. Mndende, ‘The Pride of Izizikazi: Some Aspects of African Indigenous Religion’, pamphlet published by Icamagu Institute, Cape Town, 2000; N. Mndende, ‘African Religion and Culture at the Crossroads’, pamphlet published by Icamagu Institute, Cape Town, 2001.

³³ Mndende, Quoted in Masiba, ‘Long-nosed Sangomas’, Bona, 2001, p. 32.

³⁴ Interview with isangoma R, Cape Town, 10 May 2005.

³⁵ Traditional healers are noticeably sanguine about the existence of such bad apples in their midst. The South African Traditional Healers Act, passed in 2004, attempts to address this issue, threatening sanctions for offending fraudsters. It remains to be seen however whether the Act will prove successful in curbing bogus practitioners.

³⁶ Whiteness is not of course the only prerogative for such projections, and, across Africa, healers from other countries on the continent are often credited with more muscle than local practitioners.

³⁷ Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow (London, Harvill Secker, 2006).

⁴¹ Van Binsbergen, Intercultural Encounters, p. 236.

³⁸ van Binsbergen, Intercultural Encounters, Chapters 6 and 7.

³⁹ See Masiba, ‘Long-nosed Sangomas’; N. Mbana, ‘Sangomas Betrayed’, Big Issue South Africa, February 2001.

⁴⁰ Several oracular systems exist in Southern Africa. In Zimbabwe I witnessed the use of the hakata (Shona), whilst the bone-throwing system that I was taught in South Africa is called ukujula amathambo (Xhosa).

⁴² P. Stoller, Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002), Chapter 5.

⁴⁵ Van Binsbergen, Intercultural Encounters, p. 236 (my emphasis).

⁴³ Interview with isangoma R, Cape Town, 10 May 2005.

⁴⁴ Van Binsbergen, Intercultural Encounters, p. 239.

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 228 (my emphasis).

⁴⁷ Mndende in Masiba, p. 32 (2001b).

⁴⁸ C. Mutwa, Song of the Stars: Lore of a Zulu Shaman (New York, Barrytown, 1996); P.H. Mtshali, The Power of the Ancestors: The Life of a Zulu Traditional Healer (Kamhlaba Publications, Swaziland, 2004). For white accounts, see Arden, African Spirits Speak; Cumes, Africa in My Bones; Hall, Sangoma; Hirst, ‘The Healer's Art’; Macallum, White Woman Witchdoctor.

⁴⁹ Masiba, ‘Long-nosed Sangomas,’ p. 33; Mbana, ‘Sangomas Betrayed’.

⁵⁰ Black African teachers have also been accused of taking financial advantage of white thwasa (‘Wounded Healers’, Mail and Guardian, December 2004), but this teacher attracts mostly white initiates and has a reputation for very high fees.

⁵¹ See footnote 34.

⁵² Mndende, ‘African Traditional Attitudes’; ‘The Pride of Izizikazi’.

⁵³ See for example M. Russell, ‘Understanding Black Households in Southern Africa: The African Kinship and Western Nuclear Family Systems’, Working Paper 67, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, 2004.

⁵⁴ A.D. Spiegel and A.M. Mehlwana, ‘Family as Social Network: Kinship and Sporadic Migrancy in the Western Cape's Khayelitsha’, Co-operative Research Programme on Family Life (Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, 1997).

⁵⁵ Buhrmann, Living in Two Worlds, p. 42.

⁵⁶ No-one undertakes ukuthwasa for free, and the fees required, together with the sums which must be accumulated to finance the major rituals, can serve as a stumbling block for even the most gifted black thwasa. On the other hand, fees may be negotiated (or claimed as part of the culture of kinship being proposed here) in kind, through services rendered. One white candidate was often called upon to run her teacher to the shops or on some other errand, and I often had reason to be grateful that I lacked a vehicle.

⁵⁷ See E.C. Green, Indigenous Theories of Contagious Disease (London/California, SAGE/Altamira Press Green, 1999), Chapter 2; D. Hammond-Tooke, Rituals and Medicines: Indigenous Healing in South Africa (Johannesburg, A.D. Donker, 1989), p. 96.

⁵⁸ M. Lock, Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002), pp. 203–204.

⁶⁰ Interview with isangoma R, Cape Town, 10 May 2005.

⁵⁹ S. Feierman, ‘Struggles in Control: The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modern Africa’, African Studies Review, 2/3 (June/September, 1985), p. 113; A. Kuper, South Africa and the Anthropologist (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 162, and Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine, pp. 366–74 respectively.

⁶¹ W. van Binsbergen, ‘Becoming a Sangoma: Religious anthropological fieldwork in Francistown, Botswana’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 21, 4 (1991), p. 337.

⁶² Interview with isangoma M, Cape Town, 26 May 2005.

⁶³ See, for example, M. Matandela, (2001), quoted in Masiba, ‘Long-nosed Sangomas’, pp. 30–32.

⁶⁴ J. Clifford, On the Edges of Anthropology (Chicago, Prickly Paradigms Press, 2003).

⁶⁵ Interview with isangoma L, Cape Town, 8 April 2005.

⁶⁶ Interview with isangoma R, Cape Town, 10 May 2005.

⁶⁷ The extent to which white South Africans are taking advantage of this liberalisation however, continues to disappoint township residents.