Healing What Ails S. Africa

The calling came to Janine Andrews in a dream. An elderly woman appeared clutching a fly swatter made from a cow’s tail. She was adorned with colorful beads, copper bangles and pieces of goatskin, the typical dress of a traditional Zulu healer.

In an instant, years of struggling to determine her life’s vocation became clear to Andrews, a petite blond who is the descendant of European settlers.

“Suddenly I made up my mind--that was the path I wanted to take,” said Andrews, 31, who completed training to become a sangoma last year. “That decision changed my life.”

Andrews also hopes it will change some minds, as she helps dispel some of the myths and stereotypes many of her fellow white South Africans associate with indigenous African healing practices, which rely on the summoning of ancestral spirits, interpretations of visions and the ingestion of herbal concoctions.

Although many of Andrews’ friends and relatives view her career with reservation, the Durban native--like other practitioners of her trade--believes her choice was destiny.

“You can’t just choose to become a sangoma,” Andrews said. “You must either be invited or be called to do so.”

Hers is one of Africa’s oldest informal professions. In South Africa, there are an estimated 200,000 traditional healers. Andrews reckons that in KwaZulu-Natal province--homeland of the nation’s ethnic Zulus, with about 8.9 million people--about 10 sangomas are white.

Andrews hopes that her new vocation will soon get the wider respect she feels it deserves.

In recent weeks, healers have revived a campaign to lobby the South African Parliament to have their profession recognized and empowered by law. They seek official registration as practitioners of traditional healing, so their patients could, for example, use medical insurance to pay for treatments.

Andrews, who charges the equivalent of $2 to $10 for a consultation--medication is extra--is unable to survive solely on her sangoma income.

Still, she is committed to spending much of her time treating people in the picturesque Valley of a Thousand Hills in central KwaZulu-Natal, and farther west in the town of Howick, where she has a shop selling medicinal herbs and a few items of imported clothing. To supplement her income, she earns a small commission helping local artisans sell beads and other crafts.

Andrews treats an average of two patients a day, blacks as well as whites. They come from all walks of life, and most are referred by word of mouth.

Before every treatment, Andrews performs a standard ritual. Her patients sit on an animal skin mat and mpepho, a sacred herb, is burned to cleanse the atmosphere with its pungent smoke and help summon the spirits of ancestors.

Chanting softly and gyrating, Andrews scatters pieces of animal bone, wood, dominoes, seashells, gemstones and other mystical paraphernalia over the floor. It is through these items that the ancestors relay the cause of her patient’s illness--and the possible remedy, Andrews said.

The sick person is usually made to drink an herbal potion, or muti. The concoction is meant to help purge bad substances and eventually the illness from the body.

White South Africans Doubt Sangomas’ Power

Many white South Africans are skeptical about the power of traditional healers. Critics view it as a form of witchcraft and doubt the effectiveness of black sangomas--who have generations of experience and culture on their side--much less white practitioners such as Andrews.

But Andrews’ patients say they have no doubts about her sincerity and ability to communicate with their ancestors and cure their ailments.

“It makes no difference that she is white,” said Cynthia Mnugni, 25, a Zulu, whom Andrews recently treated. “She is good, because she does everything that any other Zulu [healer] would do.”

Mnugni, who sought out Andrews after hearing of her reputation, had suffered painful menstrual cramps for years. Tablets and medicines from conventional doctors proved ineffective. Andrews said she determined that Mnugni’s problem was due to bacteria clogging the young woman’s system. She prescribed an herbal mixture, which Mnugni drank. It brought her almost instant relief, Mnugni said.

Many other traditional healers and herbalists also praise Andrews’ passion for her work and her success in healing.

“Anyone can be a sangoma,” said Scratch Bonginkosi Njwani, 28, an herbalist who works with Andrews. “As she is white, it helps to make more of a connection between blacks and whites. It’s very good for white people to get to know this traditional way of the Zulus.”

“It doesn’t matter that she is white, as long as she is trained in herbs and so long as she is doing her job,” said Meshack Madlala, 65, a member of KwaZulu-Natal’s association of traditional herbalists.

Being white has never cost her patients, Andrews said. On the contrary, it has attracted many new clients, especially blacks.

“They are very curious, and very enthusiastic,” she said, adding that black South Africans are thrilled that she, a white South African who might typically dismiss Zulu culture, appreciates their traditions.

Andrews received her training from an elderly matron known as Mama Bhengu--a sangoma in the Valley of a Thousand Hills region--whom the young woman now considers a surrogate mother. Andrews’ natural mother abandoned the family when she was an infant, and her father raised her.

The training was not easy. She slept in a hut without electricity or running water, on a floor made of mud and cow dung. Her morning routine included bathing in cold water in a nearby cattle pen, smearing her entire body with a white, clay-like substance that is considered by sangomas to be a spiritual cleansing agent, and praying.

Andrews would routinely drink a large bowl of a white, frothy herbal mixture, then forcibly vomit the concoction, as part of a purging process.

“As a trainee, the most important thing is to be clean, because you have to channel spirituality,” Andrews said. “The medicine purges. It’s a body cleanser.”

Spiritually Attuned to Hear Ancestors

Once cleansed, sangomas are not supposed to feel depressed or moody, Andrews said. If this happens, a ritual of drumming and dancing is performed to lift the sangoma’s spirits and energy levels again.

“The whole idea is to . . . be spiritually attuned,” she said. “When your energy drops, you are not able to hear the ancestors.”

Also forbidden during the training period are alcohol, smoking and sexual intercourse, which are thought to interfere with the cleansing process.

The length of the training varies and is at the discretion of the senior sangoma leading the session. Andrews’ lasted three years.

At its conclusion, Bhengu conducted a special ceremony between Andrews and her longtime boyfriend, Nico Molenkamp, to allow them to become intimately involved again.

Cleaning the cattle pen, making a fire, boiling water for washing, cooking porridge for breakfast, serving tea to Bhengu, washing the matron’s feet and rubbing them with oil were also part of Andrews’ duties as a trainee.

“It’s difficult, because it’s not [white] culture,” Andrews said. “Not many people could stick it out. You have to sleep on the floor, eat with your fingers. You are not always accepted.”

Because of her limited knowledge of the Zulu language, Andrews said, she sometimes felt like an outsider.

But in return for her labor, she was taught how to summon ancestral spirits and interpret their messages, how to use herbs to heal, and how to exploit her natural intuition.

“Janine managed it OK,” said Bhengu, a mother of five and grandmother of 28, who admittedly was skeptical when Andrews arrived at her door requesting the training. “She managed, and she graduated.”

It was the first graduation for Andrews, who did not complete high school. She and her father moved frequently when she was growing up and she attended 13 schools, she said.

When she was 15, she withdrew from the educational system. But since then she has completed courses in aromatherapy, reflexology and other holistic healing methods that interested her.

Even as a child, traditional ways captivated her. She would stand on hillsides, listening to the singing and drums of the Zulus who lived in the valleys below and yearning to be a part of that culture.

“I wanted to learn about Zulu traditional herbs,” Andrews said. “I was always a lover of mystery, of drumming and culture. I was kind of searching for a place to belong, something I could get my teeth into. I was searching for something deeper that I couldn’t find in my own culture, and this is where I found it.”

Today, Andrews largely blames the skepticism of some of her white friends on ignorance about black customs.

“Growing up as white South Africans, we had no connections with our Zulu counterparts,” Andrews said, adding that she hopes this will change now that apartheid is over and blacks and whites are free to learn about each other. “I feel my task is to connect the white culture and the Zulu culture.”

She already has had success in that with Molenkamp, her boyfriend.

“It’s a bit weird sometimes,” said the 41-year-old Dutchman, referring to rituals that involve sangomas eating the raw liver of a goat, drinking its blood or smearing the beast’s gallbladder over parts of their bodies.

“But you accept it. It allows you to see another side of South Africa.”