Les Cahiers de l'IFAS #2

FRENCH INSTITUTE OF SOUTH AFRICA

Bodies and Politics Healing rituals in the Democratic South Africa Véronique FAURE (Sous la direction de) (Co-ordinated by)

Les Cahiers de l’IFAS n°2 2002

Les Cahiers de l’IFAS réunissent les contributions occasionnelles de chercheurs et de doctorants en sciences sociales travaillant sur l’Afrique du Sud et l’Afrique australe. Les numéros regroupent des articles de spécialistes de différentes disciplines en une même thématique.

Les Cahiers de l’IFAS are a collection of occasional papers by researchers and students of the social sciences in Southern Africa. Each issue groups articles by specialists in different disciplines under a common theme.

Institut Français d’Afrique du Sud, Johannesburg, 2002 (Les Cahiers de l’IFAS, n°2) ISSN : 1608-7194 Directeur de publication : Philippe Guillaume Chief Editor

Maquette de couverture / Cover picture : Key Print cc Les textes des articles peuvent être consultés sur le site internet All articles available at the following web address: www.ifas.org.za IFAS PO BOX 542, NEWTOWN 2113 JOHANNESBURG AFRIQUE DU SUD Tel : (27) 011 -836 05 61 Fax : (27) 011 –836 58 50 ifas@ifas .co.za

SOMMAIRE/CONTENTS

BODIES AND POLITICS Healing Rituals in the Democratic South Africa Dir. Véronique FAURE

Secrétariat de rédaction :Arnold SHEPPERSON Deputy Editor

Introduction…………………………………………………………...p 1 Véronique FAURE Representations and Restitutions of African traditional healing systems…………………...............................…….p 5 Michael URBASCH The Transformation of Indigenous Medical Practice in South Africa (1985-2000)..................…………..p 23 Thokozani XABA Zulu divining Rituals and the Politics of Embodiment………………………….............……….p 41 Yong Kyu CHANG Traditional Healers and the Fight against HIV/AIDS in South Africa………………….......................................p 61 Suzanne LECLERC-MADLALA About the contributors ……………………………...........…………..p 75

Introduction Véronique FAURE The accelerated trend in the worldwide circulation not only of people, but also of differing cultural and historical models and techniques -including the spreading of western democracy as a standard for good political health-, means that other systems and thinking about what constitutes good health, be it of individuals or institutions, is more than ever a topical issue. In the framework of our multidisciplinary project, South Africa is taken as a case study through which to examine the impact of the above trends, these issues being even more immediately apparent within the extreme liability of the South African context.

The construction of a new citizen is, in the mind of the ANC/government, linked with a national feeling that emotionally links the citizens to their institutions and thus their nation. The construction of this national feeling, and the development of the idea of one unified nation, lies in the transformation of perceptions of both self and other, and the development of a dialectic between the citizens and the state. However, even if South Africans have the legal means to maintain their physical and moral integrity, as well as their citizenship status, the burdens of the past create a myriad of problems that thwart this ambition.

What has been described as a human and geographical “schizophrenia” impels us to take more interest in local events. Development in South Africa is limited by massive structural and material deprivations. The concept of healing appears to be especially pertinent in the context of the construction of a new national collective. Good physical health and good political health are intimately linked together as legitimate claims made even more so in the context of globalisation. In the framework of the re-inventing of the South African nation, the body and health provide essential keys for reading and analysing the political development of democratisation for, at least, three reasons: First of all, the body was considered as the visible centre for claims of superiority and inferiority. These claims were especially pertinent for the socalled “scientific” arguments of clinic ethnology (inspired by the racist the1

ories of the Berlin school in the 1930’s), and of the use of biblical texts to “justify” the superiority of the Whites. Second the social theory of “pigmentocracy”, inspired by these forms of thinking became the keystone of apartheid. Third, the metaphor of the social body, that had been used to justify “scientifically” and “rationally” the “need” for a separate development of the South African people, has been remobilised, since the end of the 1980’s, to promote the campaign for “repairing” those physical, or moral wounds, either individual or collective, sustained at the time of apartheid.

However, in South Africa the right to health, and to define exactly what is meant by healing is contested. This is because there exist differentiated conceptions of health, and concomitantly differentiated systems of care and practice. Of major interest here for us as researchers is the split between traditional health systems and occidental systems of health care. Various questions arise concerning the choice of therapies. Does South Africa have to recognise all the existing medical care systems? How can it find the means to bridge the gap between the official medical care –western type– and the alternative medicines, missionary and bush dispensaries, healers practising in the street, or in rural areas isolated from the administration and modern equipment? What future is there for the traditional healers?

It seems to us that an epistemology of the dichotomy between the systems of indigenous and imported care is indispensable. The unification of these health systems, and the construction of systems and attitudes of equal values in health care for all, need to be done in a way that respect the differing models of healing. However, in a system where bio-medical practices enjoy legitimacy, the respect for traditional medical care and notions of healing represent one of the most significant challenges to the new South Africa, especially with regard to the Aids epidemic.

Michael Urbasch provides a brief survey of the way that occidental medicine and the professional establishment have conceived of traditional health practices. Essentially Urbasch charts the means by which the traditional healers and the practices that they provide were designated as being outside of the rational order of things. Traditional healing was designated as superstition, mere belief, and thus not worthy of inclusion. This ideology had definite outcome both for the healer, medical practitioner and the differing 2

cultural practices. And can be seen as another aspect of the colonial drive for hegemony and conquest. A conquest not so much of land and economic resources but of intellectual legitimacy. Thus the sangoma and the inyanga were caricatured and maligned as witches. Urbasch suggests however, that this too simple dichotomy of western practice as rational and African practice as irrational is not tenable. That indeed each practice shares common assumptions and partake of a mystic and glamour that share much in common.

Thokozani Xaba shows how a stylised anthropological account of a stable traditional practice cannot be sustained. The so-called traditional healer is susceptible to contemporary economic, political and social forces. Xaba’s anthropological research shows a practice battling to cope with the exigencies of the South African situation. Responding to crime and violence and the uncertainties of social transformation and unemployment. Indigenous medicine becomes a refuge for people beset by problems, that they cannot control. Within such a situation the normalised understandings of the past are disturbed and space arise in which a diversity of practitioners can appear. Some obviously charlatans, some expanding old methods to meet new demands. These trends are set against the desire of both the government and healers to normalise practice so that traditional medicine can find a legitimacy and inclusion. Xaba’s conclusion is that a traditional practice set on legitimacy will have a long, and perhaps fruitless, battle against a health system that has accepted occidental methods.

Yong Kyu Chang’s case study develops and expands on the account of traditional healing provided by Urbasch as well as some of the themes suggested by Xaba. The desire to become a healer is not simply a personal quest, of concern to the initiate, rather Chang alerts us to the economic and social relations that are involved behind the ritual. Chang’s subtle anthropology brings us up to date by way of an examination of particular cases.

By embarking on these journeys of initiation we enter into the realities of contemporary life in South Africa. Chang’s conclusion is that the adoption of the identity of healer marks distinct change in the individual’s social status, and identity, and is a way of not only coping with a health problem but of coping with marginalisation and low status.

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Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala provides an account of the way that traditional practice has responded to HIV/AIDS. The shear numbers of these practitioners (more than 350,000) is already suggestive of the role they could play in the fight against HIV. Unfortunately because of a lack of organization and communication, and because of the way that these healers have been treated in the past, traditional healers do not play the role that they should. This situation is untenable given the power and status that such healers have in their community. Traditional healers are unrealised resource that can play an important role in the fight not only against HIV, but, in development in general. Leclerc-Madlala concludes that traditional healers are essential if South Africa is to combat its ongoing health problems effectively and concomitantly the use of these healers as a resource would help the re-emergence of the dignity and worth of all indigenous practice, giving it the status it deserved.

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African Traditional Healing Systems: Representations and Restitutions Michael Urbasch Introduction The capacity of traditional approaches to mental health to deal with the well being of populations in the developing world, has been compromised by the incorporation of a limited model of scientific knowledge into the administrative structures of social health provision. Some have suggested that science has also been mobilized both as a method and as a metaphor to reduce the power of those cultures and peoples who do not recognize it, or who order their ways of life around those cultures’ metaphysical implications (Nathan 1995; Fernando 1995a, 1995b; Horton 1967). As such, these arguments go, governments or state-legitimated health bodies tend to accept science as an ideological counterpoint to their power and influence, providing justification for the disregard of other forms of cultural practices and ways of life. The biomedical scientific approach to health thus tends to be seen as being at odds with other cultures that have a more holistic awareness of the human condition (Fernando, 1995a: 38). In the wake of the early and midtwentieth century influence of logical positivism and its offshoots (Ayer 1936/1971; Russell 1926; Whitehead and Russell 1913/1962; Quine 1953), the biomedical model of health replicates that tradition’s insistence that only scientific knowledge can be considered to be knowledge at all.

Under this approach, still influential but not as widely held as previously, other forms of “knowledge” are considered as non-sense: mere belief, speculation, metaphysics, or superstition. In this sense the scientific basis for the biomedical approach becomes the ground for replacing lore and craft as cultural markers, allowing for the exclusion of knowledge based on cultures – and their attendant ways of life – that are not based on scientific norms (Nathan, 1995; Horton 1967; Fernando 1995a, 1995b). The associated demands for empirical method and testability have led to formal medicine adapting the biomedical approach to mental health and healing (Edwards, 1986; Engel, 1977; Fernando,1995 a). Although not hegemonic in its application, this approach assumes that mental health can be dealt with like somatic disease. The model “has become structurally dominant, creating a rift between it and more culturally relativistic, humoral, functionally strong traditional healing approaches” (Edwards, 1986; 1273).

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In this paper, I review some of the limits that this places on other forms of healing. In the following section, I sketch the relationship between institutions of learning and the biomedical model. Next, I provide an outline of how the legitimacy of the biomedical model underpins the relationship between the South African state and traditional or customary healing practices. Thereafter I give an overview of some of the ethnographic data and analysis on traditional medicine, with an emphasis on the extent to which such healing relies on a different world-view to that which underpins the biomedical approach. The next section examines some of the discussions that have taken place about the extent to which the practices of both biomedical and traditional healers actually overlap in practice. I conclude that contemporary circumstances in South Africa justify exploring the ways in which elements of traditional practice might be accorded professional recognition that matches their widespread popular legitimacy.

Health Care and Professional Legitimacy In much of the world, including southern Africa, the professional health sector is almost synonymous with western biomedicine (Swartz 1998: 78). The impact of the medical model on physical illness is, for the most part, quite apparent. For mental illness, however, the linkage is more problematic.

Mental illness has been viewed through a nexus of physical, mental, and increasingly environmental and social explanation. This expanding of the problem does not, however, change the fundamental “illness model” in which a person’s problem is conceived as a disorder or illness specific to the mind instead of some other cause (Engel, 1977; Fernando 1995a; Nathan, 1995). As a rule, those trained in the context of modern biomedical theory, psychological or psychoanalytic, will evaluate human mental problems in terms of illness. The practitioner intervenes by identifying a “change” (from a hypothesized norm), giving it a name (diagnosis), evaluating the causation (aetiology) and finally making a judgement on interventions (treatment) that are likely to counteract or alleviate the condition” (Fernando, 1995a; 15).

With some modification we can follow Fernando (1995a:12) in arguing that the biomedical model of psychology conforms to a number of dominant concepts commensurate with scientific materialism and dualism. Among these, argues Fernando (1995a: 12), are mind-body dualism; the mechanistic view of life; a materialist concept of mind; a segmental 6

approach to the individual; and that illness is to due to biomedical change or natural causes. These lead to the situation in which diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders is the province of trained practitioners alone. This training must take place in an approved institution, and must provide expertise in the methodology, theory, and practice that conform to biomedical norms. Even theories and practices that are not typically dualistic in thinking, such as psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic theories, partake of the legitimising “glamour” of this medical model (Nathan, 1995: 9).

There are a number of ways to explain mental health and illness within the biomedical model. Psychodynamic explanations seek problems in the process of psychological development, or at the level of the wider environment, family or social level. In this way, theories based on psychoanalysis escape many of the assumptions of dualism and materialism. Neurological explanations view pathology in terms of bio-chemical or physiological disruption either through chemical, organic, traumatic, or heredity dynamics.

More eclectic practitioners evaluate illness in terms of a number of biological, psychological and social factors (Fernando, 1995a). Such a list, although not exhaustive, indicates some of the methods that practitioners within its authority have developed to escape the limits of the biomedical model.

The basic premise of the systems, what Nathan (1995: 9) calls “scientific psychotherapies”, regardless if they are Freudian, anti-Freudian or neoFreudian, Kleinian or Lacanian” (Nathan 1995: 9 my translation), is that the patient is ill and alone. Subsequently, it would follow, the illness resides in the subject. Nathan (1995: 9, my translation) argues that this is the major premise of “all the theoretical systems, which have seen the light of day since the second half of the nineteenth century.” The task of modern western medicine then is to return the patient to harmony with the self. The different methods all have their detractors and supporters. However, more importantly for the support of the ideas developed in this paper, they all have extensive literatures and are formally taught as required courses in psychology and medicine at various South African Universities.

The positioning of these disciplines within the academy, therefore, and their recognition through formal teaching, is perhaps one of the most important 7

indications of their recognition and intellectual and social cachet. Bove (1986) reminds us that universities are not simply teaching institutions, but are also centres of power and legitimisation. By being positioned within the legitimising nexus of academic study these disciplines find not only a place to propagate and expand theory and methodology, but also occupy positions that allow their reproduction and projection into the wider social, political, and ideological context. Such disciplines become part of the ideological apparatus of society, becoming recognized as bearers of knowledge and, more problematically, as truth, thereby escaping the designation of belief or superstition.

For all that the biomedical model still receives such widespread administrative support, there has been a parallel anthropological understanding of traditional and customary health practice that makes a different interpretation possible. In the following section, however, I will review some of the salient interventions that have ensured the structural marginalization of traditional and customary healing in South Africa.

South African Indigenous Healing and its Practice It has been estimated that there are “200, 000-traditional healers in South Africa, and up to 60% of South Africans” regularly consult these healers (Van Wyk et al., 1997: 10). This number stands in contrast to Swartz’s (1998: 79) estimate of the number of biomedical practitioners; psychiatrists 290, psychologists 2420, clinical psychologists 1060, psychiatric nurses 7000 and social workers 7300 (Swartz, 1998: 79). Clearly, a majority of South Africans uses the services of traditional healers. A study at Mogopane hospital in the then North Eastern Transvaal, calculated that “nine out of ten patients who come to the out-patients ward first consult traditional healers” (Oskowitz 1991: 21).

For all that a majority of people in the country continue to use their services, however, we have already seen that traditional healers themselves are excluded from entry into institutions sanctioned by the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) are sanctioned to train registered health professionals. This is codified into South African law, and finds expression in the association of the practices of traditional healers with 8

“witchcraft”. Healers were (and to some degree remain) governed by a number of laws and subsequent amendments: ! The Transvaal Crime Ordinance Act of 1904, Ordinance 26, made it illegal for “any person who for purposes of gain pretends to exercise or use any kind of supernatural power witchcraft sorcery enchantment or conjuration or undertakes to tell fortunes or pretends from his skill or knowledge in any occult science”. ! The Natal Code of Black Law 1891, section 19, made it illegal for traditional healers, hereafter called izangoma and izinyanga (singular sangoma and inyanga) to practice. ! Subsequently, the Witchcraft Suppression Act 50 of 1957 and amended by Act no 50 of 1970, made it an offence for “any person to exercise supernatural powers, to impute the cause of certain occurrences to another person”. ! The Amended Act of 1970 is still current and, although South African izangoma or izinyanga are covered under the Associated Health Service Professional Act (No 63 of 1982), they are also, still, covered under the Witchcraft Suppression Act. In 1974 the SAMDC forbade non-registered healers to practice or perform any act pertaining to the medical profession. “Registered healers were even forbidden to work in collaboration with non-registered healers” (Edwards, 1986: 1275). Despite being under review the ruling of 1974 still defines the Councils’ attitude, with the consequence that traditional healers remain excluded from the status and professional cachet associated with practising beneath its umbrella. The result of this history is the ongoing representation of traditional healers as witches and agents of darkness. Traditional healers supposedly practice what the prominent African doctor, Nthato Motlana, in a speech given at medical graduation ceremony at the University of the Witwatersrand, calls “mumbo jumbo”. In the same article Motlana attacks those who would reassess the role of indigenous healing with a resounding condemnation of traditional in these words: Here at home there are men and women who want to take us back to the dark ages by romanticizing the half-naked drummer of the night. They choose to forget that the so-called advanced nations of the west also passed through age when they believed that diseases 9

were also caused by mists arising from the marshes; they too believe in witchcraft, and it took centuries of turmoil, conflict of rejecting scientific discoveries to eradicate it (Motlana, 1991: 3).

It is therefore hardly surprising that traditional healers’ methods and practices are not included in the training of SAMDC-sanctioned mental health practitioners. Although there are numerous effects resulting from this exclusion, for our purposes two main consequences are hypothesized. ! First, practitioners trained under the SAMDC regime remain ignorant of how the country’s majority represent mental health, thereby denying practitioners insight into patients from the indigenous population; and, secondly, ! it keeps traditional practice outside the realm of what is sanctioned as knowledge by the dominant institutions in the country, thereby perpetuating the representations of indigenous knowledge already referred to.

The SAMDC’s exclusion of traditional methods from university training for health professionals is evidence not only of the general administrative denial of the cogency of indigenous thought in general, but also of how biomedical discourse has monopolized knowledge in the health field generally.

Indeed, it might even be correct to say that indigenous belief systems are an absence, an exclusion seldom challenged or debated. Reasons for the separation of western and indigenous healing systems have in part been already suggested. An important adjunct is that by being positioned within institutions these systems can organize both training, access to budgets, as well as structure degrees, and gain legitimacy by experts (Swartz, 1998: 78).

Nevertheless, traditional and customary healers do enjoy some protection under the law: provision [is] made for their practice in the Code of Zulu Law for example. Also in the Associated Health Service professional Act (No 63 of 1982) the Council of Associated Health Professions, a separate statutory body not affiliated to the Medical and Dental Council, has provided for the registration and control of healers (Edwards, 1986: 1275).

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Understanding indigenous healing systems The biomedical view contrasts with Asian and African patterns of health that emphasize integration, harmony, balance and the community (Edwards, 1986; Nathan 1995; Ngubane, 1977). The latter approaches view mental and physical health as essentially intertwined with religious, social, cultural, moral as well as physical and medical concerns. (Edwards, 1986; Fernando, 1995a, 1995b; Nathan, 1995; Ngubane, 1977; Swartz, 1998; Turner, 1967). African indigenous healers, therefore, Regard the human organism as a whole, which is integrated within a total ecology of the environment and with the interrelated spiritual, magical and mystical forces surrounding him/her. Likewise, their conceptual model of health is couched in terms of a balance between a healthy body and a healthy situation and that set of circumstances that surrounds them (Cheetham & Griffiths, 1982: 954).

Evidence to counter the simplistic view of the African traditional thought has long been available from a number of sources. Although it is by no means clear that these writers have dispelled all prevailing prejudices, their lucid accounts of custom, myth and rites provided ways of re-socializing and re-investing the ways of life of Africa and its peoples. Of particular note was Victor Turner’s (1967) seminal work The Forest of Symbol, with its particularly impressive account of Ndembu symbol and ritual. Turner developed methodological tools to understand the power and cogency of ritual, even going so far as to conduct the patterns of his daily life around them.

More importantly, however, Turner’s analysis showed that ritual has a politically integrative function, often serving as a vehicle for solidarity in the face of heightening social and public conflict. Turner develops the Ndembu understanding that diviner sickness arises not only from some spiritual or physical sources, but also as a result of disturbances in the social field. In this context, then Turner refers to “divination as `social analysis’ and says that Ndembu believe a patient will not get better until all the tension and aggression in the groups inter-relations have been brought to light and exposed to treatment” (Horton 1967: 54).

Practices of the Zulu and Ndebele izangoma of Southern Africa offer a similar model of social analysis. These practices are based on the concept that 11

good health involves the person within the total universe, and that disease represents a disturbance of this balance (Ngubane 1977). The task of the healer lies in restoring balance, which “is a pivotal ideology around which revolve practically all of the notions that constitute African disease” (Ngubane 1977: 27). The logic of traditional healing allows for a variety of causes for illness. Zulu practice recognizes two distinct categories of illness: natural causes, and those related to the community’s cosmology. The latter covers sorcery; ancestral interventions or invocations; those related to pollution; and possession (Ngubane 1977).

The first category, umkhuhlane, consists of illnesses that just happen, like common colds or epidemics such as smallpox or influenza. Old age and other natural process are also understood as affecting one’s health and general condition. The malfunction of certain organs can cause illness resulting in excessive bile and giving rise to conditions such as headaches. Some diseases are also associated with development and growth, like measles and mumps in children. Seasonal changes can also bring on diseases, as when summer brings on hay fever. It is also recognized that certain problems run in families (Ngubane, 1977: 23).

The second category, associated with a community’s traditional cosmology, is idiomatically known as ukufa kwabantu (diseases of the African people).

This is the category that covers the conditions most western practitioners recognize as `mental illness.’ Non-comprehension of the rationale behind the thinking encountered during these states can cause of confusion for the biomedical therapist; indeed, here is where one meets a logic totally at variance with that of biomedical practice. Although different societies may have their own ways of describing these problems, on the other hand, healers nevertheless accept an affinity between the various cultures’ approaches to this kind of illness (Ngubane 1977: 24). Ukufa kwabantu may result from a number of sources: sorcery (ubuthakathi); illnesses connected with the ancestors; illness connected with pollution; and problems of self connected with spirit possession (which is more often than not associated with an individual’s initiation as a diviner).

Ubuthakathi practitioners can utilize either substances or familiars, and are divided into three types: 12

! First is the “night sorcerer”, most closely allied to the notion of a “witch” in European tradition, who has an evil heart by nature and who harms people for no other apparent reason. Night sorcerers ride on baboons, and keep dwarfs called imikhovu who are under his control (Ngubane, 1977; 33). ! The second type of sorcerer is called a day sorcerer, who acts not as a matter of habit but only in cases of personal animosity, in situations rife with jealousy and competition (Ngubane, 1977: 34).

Their preferred method is using poisons, either adding them to the victim’s food or scattering them within his immediate environment.

This category of sorcerer may include men, but is normally comprised of women because their movements at night tend to be restricted. ! Uzalo, the third category of sorcery, is “lineage sorcery” and can be practised only by men who are heads of homesteads. In uzalo, a man persuades his ancestors to favour him at the expense of his other family members. It involves the use of black medicines and acts to deprive the victim and his descendants of the protection of the ancestors and thus make them susceptible to all kind of misfortune, misfortune that can continue down the generations (Ngubane 1977: 37).

The ancestors are believed to be primarily concerned with the welfare of their descendants, who are vulnerable to all kinds of misfortune without this protection. Not all ancestors have the power to punish or reward. Misfortune or illness due to the ancestors can arise under several different conditions.

One is when a member of the family or some other person has acted in such a way to disturb the social order (Swartz, 1986: 282). Another arises when a family member has not included the ancestors in some decision, or has simply ignored them. These oversights may result in the individual or family being denied ancestral protection, making them more vulnerable to witchcraft, or the ancestral spirits can actively act against them (Ngubane 1977).

Umnyama (pollution) literally means darkness and represents an imbalance or a slipping between the boundaries of this world and the world of 13

darkness, between life and death, and as such is particularly associated with birth and death. Umnyama is conceptualised as a force that diminishes resistance to disease, creating conditions like poor luck, misfortune (amashwa), disagreeableness and repulsiveness (isidina). People associated with umnyama patients take a dislike to them without any provocation, and is contagious in its worst form (Ngubane 1977: 78). Sufferers are known as ukuzila and are required to behave in prescribed ways: they must withdraw from social life; abstain from pleasure (including sexual intercourse); they must avoid fighting and must speak in a low voice; and they are permitted to eat only small quantities of sloppy food (Ngubane, 1977: 78).

Appropriate behaviour during pollution is thus aimed at controlling imbalances caused by the stress of major life events (Ngubane, 1977: 82).

Ignoring correct behaviour may result in neurosis designated as ukudlula (derived from the verb dlula – ‘to pass’ or ‘to surpass’). This surpassing by not observing the prescribed conduct, can result in sexual perversion or the person becoming aggressive. Dlula can sometimes include iqungo (bloodlust), resulting in homicide (Ngubane 1977; 82).

Harriet Ngubane (1977) distinguishes between three types of spirit possession. The first is the traditional possession of a sangoma, which is seen as beneficial, when she is able to hear the voices of her ancestors. These are from the healer’s own descent group and are spirits who have reached a desired state of spiritual perfection (Ngubane, 1977; 142). This type of possession is closely allied to Buhrmann’s (1981) description of thwasa possession among the Xhosa. Thwasa results from the calling of the ancestors and Buhrmann’s Jungian analysis leads her to distinguish between thwasa and bewitchment. Thwasa means the emergence of new aspects of the personality through the acceptance and integration of unconscious material (Buhrmann, 1981: 877). Bewitchment is associated with mental illness and is a result of the individual having a negative attitude to unconscious material.

Indiki (plural amandiki) is the second form possession, which seems to have emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century and is closely related to South African industrial development. Amandiki are believed to be the spirits of persons who were never given the necessary sacrifice to insure their integration with their other ancestors. Such spirits are often the spirits of 14

foreigners who become a menace to local people. They enter through the chest and the patient “bellows with a deep voice and speaks in foreign tongues” (Ngubane, 1977: 142-143). Treatment consists of a short period of initiation into a spirit cult, removing the spirit, and replacing it with the spirit of a male ancestor. Because the ancestral spirit is being induced to supersede the alien spirit, the patient is required to observe conduct similar to that of a traditional neophyte: withdrawal from society; observing abstinence; wearing special coloured medicines and clothing; and engaging in ceremonials. The object is to regain health, however, and not to become a sangoma (Ngubane, 1977: 143). A third type of possession is called ufufunyane or izizwe possession, a form that also derives from the 1920s. Whereas indiki is contracted by mere chance, ufufunyane is on the contrary due to sorcery (Ngubane, 1977: 144). The afflicted person is seen as mentally deranged, and does not derive any diagnostic or healing powers from the condition.

Ngubane’s ethnography serves as a foil for the tendency of studies to focus on the purely mystical aspects of indigenous healing practice (Swartz, 1986: 278). It is also important to distinguish between the nyanga (doctor) and the sangoma (Ngubane, 1977). The nyanga is usually male, and becomes qualified to dispense herbal medicines after having apprenticed to another nyanga for not less than a year. Izangoma, on the other hand, are predominantly women who, chosen by their ancestors and after a period of spirit possession, undergo training to develop their clairvoyant powers. Bernard’s (1999) description of Zulu spiritual healers’ initiation provides an insightful analysis of both the spiritual and political aspects of sangoma practice, which falls firmly within the mystical tradition of the shaman (Cheetham & Griffiths, 1982: 957). While both izinyanga and the izangoma are able to treat patients with herbs and with colour symbolism, it is only the sangoma who can use the ancestors to heal . “In addition to traditional healers in the black groups there is a strong emphasis on healing in the African independent churches”(Swartz, 1986: 286). These churches are for the most part offshoots of the Christian Pentecostal movement, employing a complicated theology that mixes traditional healing practice with Christian theology.

Some aspects of traditional healing practice clearly contrast dramatically with the biomedical method’s emphasis. A question is, therefore, how do we 15

understand the methodology of the sangoma? What are its connections, if any, with western practice? There is both a system and rationality at the heart of the diviner’s practice, but it is one that can easily escape the western gaze: The emphasis on non-rational aspects of healing in many aspects of folk practice, and in African healing in particular, can lead to the mistaken impression that there are no rules or rational procedures in such practices. Many studies have shown very clearly that rational ity does play an important part in decision-making and treatment in African indigenous healing (Swartz, 1998: 86).

Rethinking the dichotomy The “ethno psychiatrist” Tobie Nathan (1995) argues that to understand the indigenous healer, it is necessary to distinguish between two ways of thinking. The first is that of communities who think that the universe is ontologically heteroglossic and pluralistic. In this world-picture, there are multiple layers of beings and powers who possess various levels of agency, what Nathan calls “les sociétés à univers multiples” (Nathan, 1995: 10-11). This is in contrast with those communities –usually associated with `the West’– who occupy an ontologically monoglossic universe in which matter is dead and without agency, what Nathan calls the “univers unique”. The former universe is that of the diviner, while the latter is home to the biomedical fraternity.

Nathan (1995) illustrates the distinction between these world-views by examining the fate of a person (almost invariably a woman) who once would have been labelled as an `hysteric’. In the biomedical tradition the problem (the illness) is given a name, thus hysteria. The woman would be referred to what Nathan calls the master of rational knowledge (in this case a psychoanalyst). The aetiology of the problem is then identified, for arguments sake we imagine the hysteric is suffering due to unconscious sexual desire. An intervention of some kind is thus decided upon, in this case the unravelling of unconscious sexual desires. Accompanying the procedure is a representation of the patient: she is understood as infantile, her behaviour is read as regressive. The therapeutic aim is to help the patient towards a more mature understanding. The means at the therapist disposal is the psy16

choanalytic technique, the mise en scène of the analysis, transference, interpretation, the agon with the self. In conclusion Nathan repeats the leitmotif that runs throughout all his work, the outcome of the treatment is that the patient is alone, “alone in face of the savant alone, even against the state” (Nathan, 1995: 11.my translation).

In the other form of society, a woman presenting the same symptoms is considered very differently. The cause of the problem is considered to be an attack by spirits. The woman is thus referred to someone who has knowledge of this layer of the universe, most often as the result of the diviner’s own attachment to the spirit world. The diviner also draws on a practice of intervention, in this case identifying the spirit to gain knowledge of its intention, to enter into negotiation and dialogue with it. The representation of the patient is thus that she is seen as a door to the spirit realm: an ambiguous person, a sorcerer, perhaps, or a prophetess. In other words, she is represented as already an expert (Nathan 1995: 22). The healer’s concern is not the woman, therefore, but the hidden realm and the spirit possessing the woman. Finally, the outcome is often the patient’s attachment to a society of women who are connected to this class of spirits. The woman by definition is not alone but part of a community and has a social place, her problem understood through her connection to others (Nathan, 1995: 13).

Nathan’s model clearly has parallels with the models identified by Ngubane (1977), and also with Buhrmann’s (1977a/1977b) and Turner’s (1967) analyses of the role of the sangoma. The diviner’s role is to restore a natural balance and order (Ngubane, 1977: 27) by bringing the patient into a new order of being. Cheetham and Griffiths (1982: 958) take this a step further, concluding that divination and psychotherapy result in a set of universal outcomes. These outcomes include: The rationalization of fears of unknown origin, projection, displacement, penance and undoing. This intriguing list of ‘ego defence mechanisms’ may be seen to have some plausibility as a proposed set of outcomes of the activities of the traditional healer and the psychotherapist, i.e. rationalizations involving the invocation of familiars, sorcery or the id-superego conflict; projection onto ancestors, deities or id impulses; displacement onto witchcraft 17

or parental deprivation; penance by ritual slaughter, fees or the relinquishing of defences; and undoing through ritual observance, appointments regimes or the talking through of problems (Cheetham and Griffiths, 1982: 957).

This suggests that although there are distinctions between the theory and world-views of the biomedical and traditional methods of healing, the two positions also share a number of similarities.

Edwards (1986: 1275) emphasizes the coherence and consistency of traditional Zulu approaches as well as confirming the universal components of the two systems. To show this, Edwards (1986: 1274) undertook to study the effect of the various methods on a number of patients diagnosed as suffering from a range of problems, including, anxiety, depression, epilepsy, mental retardation, physical disorder of natural causation and schizophrenia.

Both traditional healers and clinical psychologists examined the patients who, when asked to assess the interventions of the two kinds of practitioner, rated both the clinicians and traditional healers as “being more or less helpful� (Edwards, 1986: 1275). On this basis, Edwards (1986: 1275-6) argues for greater co-operation and integration between the two realms (Edwards, 1986:1275-6). This would require continuous research to identify the ethical and legal implications of traditional and modern healers working together, the impact of this on training, and related issues.

Conclusion The paper has attempted to show that there is ample evidence to support the value of indigenous healing, but that the academy and the Medical and Dental Council continue, for the most part, to ignore its rationality and value. Although the SAMDC intends to review the status of traditional healers, it will be interesting to see if any future review changes the representation or status of such healers, or if the methodology of traditional healers will ever become a part of the training of health professionals. Yet the attributes required of the diviner are in fact similar to those required of the western psychotherapist (Cheetham & Griffiths 1982: 957). Following the work of Fuller Torrey (1972), Cheetham and Griffiths (1982) suggest a number of points of similarity between the diviner and psychotherapist.

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First, both possess their own consistent world view. Second, both the diviner and therapist show a particular savoir-faire, in other words a set of personal qualities. Third, both the mise-en-scene of the therapeutic situation and the status of the therapist are vital to the outcome. Fourth, the technique must be acceptable and recognizable to the patient (Cheetham & Griffiths, 1982: 957). Frank (1972, cited in Cheetham and Griffiths 1982: 957) has show that there is a series of underlying themes that are shared by psychotherapists all over the world, similar to those suggested by Nathan (1995). In summary, these themes include: an intense emotional and confiding relationship; and a rational myth offering a cause for the problem and simultaneously offering powerful emotional reassurance to the sufferer.

Further, the offering of new information to the client, the status of the therapist, and the mise en scene of the setting, are vital to the treatment. Of final interest is the expectation of success offered by the treatment, and the deep emotional arousal that provides the motor for change (Cheetham & Griffiths, 1982: 957-958).

In conclusion, then, there is clearly a need for further study into the ways in which the mental health profession in South Africa – and the developing world in general – can benefit patients from marginalized groups by adopting methods that do not privilege the biomedical model to the exclusion of other existing traditional and customary practices. Although there may be radical philosophical differences between the means of explaining and justifying them, these two forms of practice have many pragmatic and empirical elements in common. In South Africa it would not be too much to say that the legacy of apartheid includes a significant population of post-traumatic stress sufferers for whom biomedical interventions are simply out of reach. By the same token, biomedical theory’s focus on the individual limits its capacity to deal with entire communities of suffering. This paper has outlined some evidence to suggest that sufficient common elements are present between biomedical and traditional practice to justify an examination into those areas in which a combination of both can open up a whole new realm of community healing. Given the revelations of people’s experiences during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there is ample need for some way to institutionalise such an intervention.

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References Ayer, A. J., 1971, Language, Truth and Logic. Harmondsworth, Penguin (Originally published 1936).

Bernard, P., 1999, Rituals of the river: convergence of baptism and river spirits in isangoma cosmology in the Natal Midlands, Unpublished paper.

Bove, P., 1986, Intellectuals in Power: a genealogy of critical humanism, Columbia University Press.

Buhrmann, M. V., 1977(a), “Xhosa diviners as Psychotherapist”, Psychotherapeia, (31), pp 17-20.

Buhrmann, M. V., 1977(b), “Western psychiatry and the Xhosa patient”.

South African Medical Journal, (51), pp 464-466.

Buhrmann, M. V., 1981, “Thwasa and bewitchment”, South African Medical Journal, 61, pp 877-879.

Cheetham, R.W.S. & Griffiths, J.A., 1982, “The traditional healer/diviner as psychotherapist”, South African Medical Journal, (62), pp 957-958.

Edwards, S.D., 1986, “Traditional and modern medicine in South Africa.

A research study”, Social Science and Medicine, (22), pp 1273-1276.

Engel, G. L., 1977, “The need for a new medical model: A challenge for biomedicine”, Science, (196), pp 129-136.

Fernando, S., (1995 a), “Social realities and mental health” in S. Fernando, (Ed) Mental health in a multi-ethnic society, Routledge.

Fernando, S. (1995 b). „Professional interventions: therapy and care”, in S. Fernando, (Ed) Mental health in a multi-ethnic society, Routledge.

Frank, J.D., 1972, “Common features of Psychotherapy”, Australian/ New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, (6), pp 30-35.

Fuller Torrey, E,. 1972, The mind game: witchdoctors and psychiatrists, New York, Emerson Hall.

Horton, R., 1967, “African traditional thought and western science”, Africa, (37, 1), pp 51-185.

Motlana, N., 1991, “Editorial”, Nursing RSA, 6(7), p 3.

Nathan, T., 1995, “Manifeste pour une psyhopathologie scientifique”, in T. Nathan & I. Stengers, Médecins et sorciers, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, Paris, pp 9-115.

Ngubane, H, 1977, Body and mind in Zulu medicine, Academic Press, London.

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Oskowitz, B., 1991, “Bridging the communication between traditional healers and nurses”, Nursing RSA, Verpleging, (6-7), pp 20-22.

Quine, W. V. O., 1953, (2nd ed., rev 1964), From a logical point of view : 9 logico-philosophical essays, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Russell, B., 1926, Our knowledge of the external world as a field for scientific method in philosophy, Allen & Unwin, London.

Swartz, L., 1986, “Transcultural psychiatry in South Africa. Part1”.

Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, (23), pp 273-303.

Swartz, L., 1987, “Transcultural psychiatry in South Africa. Part 11”, Transcultural Psychiatric Research review, (24), pp 5-30.

Swartz, L., 1996, “Culture and mental health in the rainbow nation: Transcultural psychiatry in a changing South Africa”, Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, (33), pp 119-136.

Swartz, L., 1998, Culture and mental health : a southern African view, Oxford University Press, Cape Town.

Turner, V., 1967, The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual, Cornell University Press.

Van Wyk, B.A., Van Oudtshoorn, B., Gericke, N., 1997, Medicinal plants of South Africa, Briza, Pretoria.

Whitehead, A.N., Russell, B., 1913, (2nd ed 1925-60), Principia mathematica. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Legislation Natal Code of Black Law 19, 1891.

Statute Law of the Transvaal. The Crimes Ordinance, 1904 Ordinance 26, 1904.

Witchcraft Suppression Act 3 of 1957.

Witchcraft Suppression Amendment Act 33 50 of 1970.

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The Transformation of Indigenous Medical Practice in South Africa (1985 to 2000) Thokozani Xaba Introduction Indigenous medical practice in South Africa has gone through numerous transformations. In the late 19th century, the state attempted to control the practice by legalising the practices of izinyanga (herbalists) and proscribing the practices of izangoma (diviners). The early 20th century saw biomedicine becoming established as the premier medical system, prompting campaigns to prohibit indigenous medical practice. The latter part of the 20th century witnessed the failure of the state’s attempts to prevent the latter.

During the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, people felt threatened as crime and violence seemed to rise unabated, and resorted to magical solutions to address the challenges they faced as well as threats to their lives and property. Some of the practices which became prominent as people scrambled to protect themselves highlighted the dark side of indigenous medical practice.

These practices prompted renewed calls from various quarters for the proscription of indigenous medical practice. Others lobbied for the normalisation of indigenous medical practice.

This paper aims to address the conditions which affected and were affected by indigenous medical practice (between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s) and the consequent opposing responses to such developments. It is argued that the socio-economic and political conditions prevailing between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s drastically changed the economic, political, social and personal security of Africans, during the time when the responsible state institutions were unable or reluctant to respond to their needs.

People who were threatened or under assault therefore found refuge in the protective powers of indigenous medicines. Since some of the conditions they attempted to address were new, indigenous medicines and the practice itself were changed (as they had consistently changed over time) in order to respond effectively to such conditions. The desperation of many led to greater demands for medicines with magical cures and solutions, creating an opening for charlatans who preyed on the desperate people. Among some of 23

the ‘cures’ produced were concoctions, which were mixed with human body parts. The emergence of charlatans, the discovery of the use of human body parts, coupled with the lack of appreciation of the differences between them and authentic indigenous healers, resulted in calls for the proscription of the practice of indigenous medicines. Another better-informed response was the suggestion for the normalisation of indigenous medical practice.

In addressing the issues mentioned above, the concept of indigenous medical practice requires explanation. In this paper, indigenous medical practice refers to the practices that izinyanga, izangoma and abathandazi (Christian spiritual healers) engage in when they treat people who come to them with physical, social and psychological problems. Such practices are indigenous not because they can be traced to a time in the distant past but because, to effect them, the practitioner invokes African conceptions of cosmology and cosmogony [1]. Over the years, such practices have influenced and have been influenced by African life in South Africa. While the common understanding of ‘medicine’ relates to their application to cure physical ailments, in this paper, ‘medicine’ can also be used to produce disagreeable results.

The Zulu distinctions are amakhambi (herbal medicines; i.e. medicines with healing powers) and imithi [2] (medicines which produce bad results).

Therefore, a medical practitioner can be consulted for medicines that produce either cures or causes ailments.

While most practitioners tend to dispense one type of medicine, some carry both kinds and issue them to those who consult them as and when needed.

This leads us to an important distinction that of izinyanga, izangoma and abathandazi, on the one hand, and charlatans and abathakathi, on the other.

Charlatans refer to those people who claim to possess powers that they clearly do not possess. They claim to have cures to incurable diseases, to have magical solutions to inscrutable social problems and to have magical solutions to economic problems [3] abathakathi (singular umthakathi) refers to wizards and witchdoctors [4]. These people are distinct from izinyanga, izangoma and abathandazi in that they specialise in medicines that produce harmful results. While this term refers to the specialist, over the years, any person who uses medicines that produce such results is referred to as umthakathi.

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Method and Layout The supporting information in this paper is from a few cases, which are part of a larger research study on how indigenous medical practice has changed over time. The cases used here are based on interviews with people who consulted indigenous medical practitioners, participant observation in which I accompanied some people during their consultations with, as well as archival sources with information pertaining to the practice of indigenous medicines.

A Shield and a Place to Hide: Indigenous Medicines in the 1980s and 1990s The socio-economic and socio-political environment of the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s produced high levels of political violence and violent crime.

(Sitas, 1986 and Mare and Hamilton, 1987) The economy was in recession (South African Reserve Bank Quarterly Bulletin, June 1995) and consequently many people lost their jobs, while many others could not find work (South African Reserve Bank Quarterly Bulletin, March 1994). The drought during this period seems to have pushed large numbers of people out of rural areas to seek opportunities in urban areas [5]. The political conflict between the two main political parties in KwaZulu-Natal, coupled with the rising level of property crimes owing to the poor economic conditions, left most people feeling vulnerable (Mare and Hamilton, 1987: 181-216).

Consequently, there was increased demand for indigenous medicines to be used as protection against the consequences of the recession, as well as against crime and violence. Such demand resulted in changes in indigenous medicines themselves, practitioners improving them to respond to the new socio-economic and socio-political conditions of Africans.

There were two notable sets of changes that occurred. The first set of changes occurred in the use of indigenous medicines. The second set of changes occurred in the practice itself. This discussion is limited to medicines used to procure employment, to protect property and to oneself from both physical and metaphysical harm.

New medicines in old bottles I: A job by any means The first set of changes occurred to people consulting practitioners. The 25

recession saw large numbers of people losing their jobs as well as many being put on short time. The numbers of the jobless swelled as recent matriculants failed to find employment. It became harder and harder to find employment, particularly permanent employment. Those who were looking for work could rely on the extra advantage from indigenous medicines to get employment. There were medicines to make one attractive to employers.

Since, during this time better-educated Africans could be called for employment interviews, many used indigenous medicines, such as isimatisane (odenlandia corymbosa), not only to make themselves attractive to selectors but also to enable them to ‘sweet-talk’ the selectors. The leaves of isimatisane are traditionally chewed as protective charms when passing the hut of an enemy (Hutchins, 1999:294). Isimatisane as well as love charms were used by those who were lucky enough to be employed and who still wanted to keep their jobs.

Also, known forms of medicines were modified to respond to new conditions, and completely new medicines were developed to respond to such conditions. An example of known medicine that was modified for use in a new environment was that used in courting women. Normally, the boy would break a small piece of the root of the medicine and keep it under his tongue while talking to the woman. The medicine was supposed to make his voice sound musical to the woman and thus make her fall in love with him.

During the 1980s and 1990s, this medicine was prescribed for people going for interviews, to make the potential employees’ voice sound musical to the interviewers and, in this way, make them choose the person for the job.

The following case shows, however, that people in troubled relations with their employers who seek solutions from indigenous medicines can turn out to be a threat to the healers when the prescribed medicines fail to produce the desired results: A Mpumalanga security guard is reported to have gunned down a 78 year-old traditional healer, Mrs Eldah Mokoena, and critically wounded her supplier, the 70 year-old Mr Nelson Sibiya, after claiming that Mrs. Mokoena gave him the wrong ‘medicine’. The man had problems at work that affected his relationship with his employer. He wanted ‘medicines’ to help him improve relations 26

with his employer. Mokoena is supposed to have told the man that, if he washed himself with the ‘medicine’, the relationship with his employer would improve. Police spokeswoman, Sergeant Thabisile Gama, reported that the ‘medicines’ “apparently did not have the desired effect, and in a rage, the man went to Mokoena’s home and accused her of witchcraft, shot her four times, killing her instantly.”

He then went to Mr Sibiya’s house, accused him of supplying the wrong ‘medicine’, “fired seven shots hitting Sibiya in the body and jaw”. The man later handed himself over to the police and surrendered his 9mm pistol (Independent On Line, 2000-03-29; African Eye News Service).

What is important in this case is that the man sought relief for his troubles in indigenous medicines. For him to have done so, he must have either witnessed or heard of indigenous medicines producing such relief. While the report does not mention the name of the ‘medicine’ used, various medicines, which, in the past, were used to make men likeable to women, were modified during the 1980s and 1990s to make people both to get and keep employment.

New medicines in old bottles II: Property shield in the time of need The high rates of crime and violence, as well as the seeming reluctance and inability of the police to curb it, led many to seek the powers of indigenous medicines to protect themselves as well as their property. It is during this time that medicines proliferated for protection of one’s property such as house and car, as well as one’s family. The case of Doom’s car illustrates what people did when they lost their property and the police failed to help them. Doom was born in Greytown in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, but grew up in the Durban townships. After working for some time, he and a coworker also from the Midlands region, Zitha, started a taxi business.

After negotiating with the owners of the taxis, which ran the route in which they were to work, they started operating their taxi. Since both of them were still employed, they hired a driver who submitted the day’s takings to them every evening. When they were not working, they took turns to relieve the driver. Whoever used the taxi last would take it home until the following 27

morning. One morning, Doom got up and found that the minivan was missing from the garage at his house. He first called Zitha and then the driver.

Neither had taken the minivan, and it slowly dawned on Doom that the minivan had been stolen. He reported the matter to the police, and then went to an umthandazi (a Christian diviner) in Kwamashu who was reputed to use isibuko (a mirror) to divine. He got to her around mid-day. She told him that, if his ancestors, wanted him to find the minivan, he would see the person who stole it on the mirror. It did not matter how hard he concentrated, Doom just did not see anything on the mirror. At the end of the session, the umthandazi referred Doom to another umthandazi near Pietermaritzburg.

But Doom was not interested.

After trying a few ‘seers’, a fellow taxi owner told him that when his (fellow taxi owner) taxi was stolen, he found it with the assistance of the man from an informal settlement outside Umlazi. Doom was not encouraged when he saw the shack in which the man lived. However, since he had travelled a long way, he went in to see the man who turned out to be something between a sangoma and umthandazi. He used water divination but, instead of invoking the names of Jesu and Mariya, called on Doom’s relatives to help reveal where the car was. He gave Doom a calabash of water and asked him to look in it for his car. When Doom looked at the water, he saw a ‘picture’ of a white minivan parked under red plastic port, behind a shack. After some discussion and after the man had consulted his own ancestors, he asked Doom to accompany him to go get the car. Doom was surprised at this since most ‘seers’ only tell you where you can find your property.

They took a taxi to Durban and then to Inanda. After walking some distance from where the taxi dropped them, they came to a ravine across which was the red carport, but the minivan was not under it. They asked a woman washing clothes at a tap nearby whether she had seen a white minivan parked under the red carport. She said that the driver of the minivan was her younger brother who was a ‘trouble maker’, even told them she suspected that he and his friends had stolen it. They told the woman that the minivan belonged to Doom, who reported the matter to the police in Inanda on the way back. The police told him that there was nothing they could do since he (Doom) did not know where the thief was. When he got to Umlazi, he again reported the matter to the police who told him that the matter was outside their jurisdiction. After numerous attempts at staking out the red carport, 28

neither Doom nor Zitha managed to get the minivan back. On one of their visits they discovered that the minivan had been broken up and sold for parts, two front doors under the carport being evidence of this.

During the mid-1980s and the early 1990s, people who lost their property could not rely on the police. Indigenous medical practitioners served both to protect people’s property as well as to find it when lost. In the case mentioned above, Doom found out what happened to his car but did not find his car or the man who stole it. If Doom wanted to punish the person who stole his minivan, he would not have gone to the police. Like many others, he would have both sought and punished the person himself, assisted by either relatives or friends or he would have sought such assistance from the powers of indigenous medicines.

New medicines in old bottles III: The body of iron The ubiquitous crime and violence impressed on many the need for protection should they become victims of crime and violence. One way in which this was done was to use intelezi to ensure that bullets would not penetrate a person’s body. Traditionally, intelezi was used to strengthen and protect warriors during wars, but during the period under review many ordinary resorted to using it used to protect themselves from violence. The case of Madlangala provides evidence for the use of this form of medicine to protect one’s body as well as one’s house.

Madlangala, from the Hlabisa District of KwaZulu-Natal, married a kind woman in 1969, and bought a house in Chesterville. Because of his wife’s kindness to an elderly woman neighbour, the old woman came to make them proposition in 1991. She told them she had been living by herself in a house that her employer bought for her, but she had grown old and had no one to look after her. She had suffered a stroke, which made it difficult for her to cope. She asked them to look after her and promised them that she would bequeath her only valuable possession, her house, to them. This was because although she married when she was young, her husband had died before they could have any children. She lived alone because she had refused to marry one of her husband’s brothers, and her in-laws had abandoned her.

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After several months of this they agreed to go to a lawyer where the elderly neighbour made a will leaving the house in Madlangala’s name. The woman passed away a year and seven months after the date of the will. As Madlangala’s family prepared for the funeral, the deceased’s relatives came to claim the body. Most vociferous was a niece who, claiming to be the deceased’s daughter, used to visit her when she was well but had disappeared after the first stroke. However, the will clearly stated that the old woman had no dependants and had born no child in her life. The niece reported the matter to the police, who prevented Madlangala and his family burying the old woman on the first weekend after the death. When the second weekend approached without any resolution, Madlangala’s wife asked him to give the body to the niece “so that the old woman could rest in peace”. A week later, the vociferous niece came to claim the house.

Madlangala showed her the copy of the will and told her that she had no right to the house. The woman went away threatening to return with “people who would force you out”.

Madlangala told his inyanga about the threat, and was referred to another inyanga near Stanger. The whole family went to Stanger to see this inyanga, who told them that, if the threat was real, both they and their house needed protection. He strengthened their bodies with medicines applied to incisions at all the major joints of their bodies. He then promised them to come to strengthen their house as well as the old woman’s house the following weekend. After dark, he started by sprinkling ‘fortified medicine’ in and out of Madlangala’s house, and then buried some of the medicines at the four corners of the house.

On Thursday evening of the following week, the niece came to ask Madlangala if he still did not want to vacate the house. Madlangala told her that the house belonged to his family. By this time, Madlangala had asked his wife and children to go stay with relatives at Umlazi. (His wife refused to leave, but had sent the children to Umlazi). He had told some men from his village that he thought he would be attacked that evening. Four of the them came armed with guns, one of which was given to Madlangala, to await the attack. Within an hour of the niece leaving, three minibus vans arrived at the house. Six men in long overcoats – a mark of armed men dur30

ing the heyday of the violence – disembarked and approached the house and knocked. Their leader asked for a Mr Mkhize the taxi owner. Madlangala told them that he did not know any Mkhize who owned taxis. The leader mumbled something about `the wrong house’ and the men left.

In this case, the fortification of Madlangala’s family as well as his houses seemed to have worked in protecting them from a planned assault. What seems to have happened to the men who came in minibus vans is commonly known as ukudungeka kwengqondo (befuddlement of the mind) [6] which is understood to be induced by certain types of indigenous medicines.

There are numerous other examples of what happens to people who are exposed to this condition. These include attackers who search in vain for houses that have `disappeared’ and others who find inanimate objects (such as pools of water or forests) where they expect to find houses. In some cases, the attackers find themselves shot at from the `pool’ or `forest’.

Bryant (1966: 19-20) mentions izimpundu as the medicine that was used to confuse abathakathi.

New practices for new problems I: Chopping trees for survival The second set of changes occurred to the practice of indigenous medicines.

The economic conditions were hard for most Africans in the mid-1980s and early 1990s but were felt even harder in rural areas that relied on remittances from people working in urban areas. Over the years, rural communities could resort to supplementing remittances with food grown on their fields. However, the drought of the early 1990s eliminated that option (Padayachee, 1997). It is during this time that many women, forced by poverty in rural areas, were catapulted into the ‘informal economy’. Most women sold fruit and vegetables. But many started cutting indigenous medical plants for sale in urban areas. The entry of these women changed the nature of harvesting indigenous plants and the manner in which medicines were sold. Anyone could then buy medicines from the women in the established Durban’s Muthi Martket [6] and then set themselves up as indigenous healers. The sales of indigenous medicines proved very lucrative for many sellers, with the Provincial Minister of Traditional and Environmental Affairs estimating in 1997 that trade in indigenous medicines in the Province was worth R61 million a year (The Daily News, 14 May 1997).

According to amakhosi who participated in the 1915 hearings, traditionally, 31

a healer or diviner found indigenous medicines through the help of his or her ancestors (Chief Native Commissioner’s report, CNC -193-149/1915).

Once the medicines had been found, rituals for harvesting -such as prayer and thanks to the ancestors- were performed. In most cases, the person would only harvest the part of the tree or plant (such as bark, leaves, roots etc.) that he or she needed. The rest of the tree would be saved for future use. Medicines were harvested at particular times during the year, mostly during the time when harvesting would do less damage to the tree or plant.

The ‘just-in-time’ nature of the use meant that people only harvested the medicines they needed.

However, the entry of large numbers of women who were only traders and not healers or diviners completely changed such relationship with the environment. Interested in the money they got for the medicines, praying to the ancestors for the medicines would not be the first thing that came to their minds. To lower their transport costs to urban areas, it became necessary for them to transport the medicines in bulk. Competition with others meant that medicines were harvested throughout the year and that the whole tree or plant would be harvested instead of its primary parts. Such processes resulted in the over-exploitation of indigenous medicines and threatened the survival of some species. (Cunningham, 1992; INR,1998).

New practices for new problems II: Charlatans and their magic cures There were, also, people who entered the practice as practitioners when, in fact, they had not gone through the training or been called to the practice.

The worsening economic conditions led many to set themselves up as indigenous medical practitioners. People who, for one reason or another, did not want to go to hospitals, were susceptible to being taken advantage of by such self-styled ‘traditional healers’. The case of Mrs Ndlovu shows how charlatans promised false relief to a woman suffering from cervical cancer.

Mr and Mrs Ndlovu, now in their late fifties, have been married for about 29 years and have four children and five grandchildren. They have lived around Durban since the mid 1950s, and, except for occasional colds or influenza, have not had any serious illnesses in the family. However, Mrs Ndlovu fell ill early in 1994, complaining about a stomach-ache that kept 32

her awake at night and did not seem to respond to pain killers. A neighbour suggested that she be taken to a hospital for examinations, but both she and her husband feared that the doctors would say that she had either ulcers, or worse, cancer, and would then operate on her [7]. They both agreed, instead, to see an inyanga.

They went to Tongaat (30 km north of Durban) where the inyanga diagnosed her illness as stomach sores, a result of a jealous neighbour’s witchcraft. At a charge of R80, he gave her two medicines: one was to cure Mrs Ndlovu’s sores; the other both to `cure’ Mrs Ndlovu’s house and yard, and to prevent further witchcraft. After a week, Mrs Ndlovu was no better; in her legs were swollen and she was losing strength. After some time, I accompanied Mr Ndlovu to a Zanzibari inyanga in Phoenix –the Indian township East of Kwamashu– who was reputed to have cured many people.

The inyanga was away when we arrived, but after some 15 minutes a new, white, luxury German car arrived.

An Indian family who had arrived earlier was the first to be called in. While we waited, I noticed a Certificate which declared that the inyanga was a Member of the United African Herbalists Organization. A card pinned next to the certificate boasted of cures for all sorts of illnesses and diseases, even AIDS, as well as medicine for “Lotto Luck” and “Casino Luck”. When we were called in, the inyanga asked Mr Ndlovu whether he wanted ukubhula (divination to find out what the problem was with his wife and family). Mr Ndlovu agreed to the use of abalozi (ventriloquism) [8] to find out what was wrong, and the inyanga left the room. A boy of about 15 walked in and started spraying and smearing concoctions on small drums, inconspicuous in one corner of the room, through which abalozi were to speak. The inyanga came in and the boy left, and the inyanga asked the drums to speak. After some time, a raspy young woman’s voice greeted Mrs Ndlovu through the drums. It told Mrs Ndlovu that her condition was a result of jealous neighbour, and that the inyanga was going to help her.

For R310 (R50 for divination and R260 for the rest), Mrs Ndlovu was given medicines to “strengthen against evil spirits”, to use at her house. To my astonishment, the inyanga guaranteed that Mrs Ndlovu was going to be well within six days; no inyanga ever offers such precise predictions. After six days Mrs Ndlovu’s stomach pains were completely gone and the swelling in 33

her legs was going away. But after a further two days her legs were swollen again. After visits to numerous other healers, Mrs Ndlovu’s condition did not improve. She was eventually admitted to a hospital where radiation therapy was administered. However, she passed away shortly after admission.

This case reveals how, although they charge exorbitant fees for solutions to all the problems that people present to them, some self-styled `healers’ actually provide no help at all. Many display `certificates’ from one or other `association’ or `organisation of traditional healers, and are notorious for claiming to use human body parts in their medicines. Speculation regarding the use of body parts cast away in bushes, which parts are used for what, and the effect of such ‘medicines’, captivated the nation in the early 1990s.

The discovery of mutilated bodies (especially of children) during this time added to calls for the proscription of all forms of indigenous medical practice.

Responses and debates, 1994-2000 The revival of indigenous medical practice, the proliferation of charlatans and the apparent spate of `witch killings’ and `muti killings’, coupled with distorted coverage by the mass media [9], spurred interest in the practice from various quarters. Since many people could not distinguish between witchcraft and indigenous medical practice, most stories led to calls for the proscription of indigenous medical practice. Among the various such responses that followed, the following are noteworthy: ! The 1996 report of the Ralushai Commission. In 1996 the Northern Province government instituted a Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Professor NV Ralushai, to investigate the reasons behind and the causes of the widespread `witch killings’. Among the recommendations of the Commission (Ralushai et al, 1996) were: (i) the institution of a code of conduct for traditional healers; (ii) the liberation of people through education from belief in witchcraft; (iii) the institution of different penalties for witches and those who sniff them out; and (iv) the criminalization of the forced collection of money required to pay izangoma.

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! The 1998 Institute for Multi-Party Democracy (IMPD) review of the Anti Witchcraft Act of 1957. After consulting with stakeholders in various communities, particularly in the Northern Province, the IMPD issued a discussion document entitled Witchcraft Summit, Towards New Legislation which drafted a Witchcraft Control Act designed to replace the Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1957. One recommendation was for creating “special witchcraft courts as appendages to the formal court system,” co-operating with the Departments of Health and Justice, with the power to set fines for people “making reckless or self-serving witchcraft accusations and on those found actually practising witchcraft.” ! In 1999, the Commission on Gender Equality (CGE) hosted a Conference that sought to make recommendations for reform of the Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1957. Key papers by Dr Esther Njiro and advocate Seth Nthai Njiro were presented. Njiro (1999), director of the University of Venda Centre for Gender Studies, argued that the `smelling’ of witches (who are mainly female) by youth (who are mainly male), is a form of gender violence. Nthai (1999) outlined the manner in which previous governments had treated “traditional healers”, appealing to the new government not to address its relations with traditional healers in the same manner.

A different set of responses, however, appealed for the ‘normalisation’ of indigenous medical practice, pointing to the benefits that would be lost should the practice be banned. The were three aspects to this response: ! First, the government instituted its own review of existing legislation that pertained to indigenous medical practice such as the Anti Witchcraft Act of 1957. The Select Committee on Social Services tabled its report on indigenous medical practice in 1998, recommending, amongst others, the “formation of a statutory national traditional medical council.” ! Research centres were established to identify the biological properties and medicinal advantages of various indigenous medicines, notably a Medical Research Council-supported collaborative project between the pharmacology departments of the Universities of Cape Town and Western Cape to test plants supplied to them by indigenous healers for medicinal qualities.

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! Practitioners themselves tried to institutionalise indigenous medical practice: (i) Indigenous medical hospitals were established, 5 of them between 1994 and 1998 in Durban alone. These did not receive state subsidies, relying only on fees paid by patients, and encountered difficulties. By 2000, all five hospitals had closed. (ii) Some employers and medical aid funds accepted indigenous medical practice and agreed to allow indigenous medical practitioners to claim against medical aid funds.[10] (iii) The KwaZulu-Natal Traditional Healers’ Council (KZNTHC) was established to bring together various Traditional Healer’s Associations from KwaZulu-Natal. Although the relationship is not clear at present, KZNTHC is likely to be the KwaZulu-Natal chapter of the proposed Statutory National Traditional Healers Council (Select Committee on Social Services, 1998). One of its functions is to test members before they are issued with the Health Ministry recognised certificates of competence and membership cards, as a way to exclude charlatans (Chavunduka 1986:70).

Conclusion The ‘normalisation’ of indigenous medical practices, so far, has concentrated on the practices of izinyanga at the expense of those of the abathandazi.

The Select Committee (1998) recommended the exclusion of abathandazi “because they are not traditional in nature and their training and accreditation is unclear and ill-defined”. Yet it is not clear that the Select Committee understood the practices of abathandazi; was lack of knowledge not the main reason previous legislation excluding izangoma? It would seem that we have gone full circle from the Natal Code of Native Law (No.19 of 1891), which legalised the practices of izinyanga and banned the practices of izangoma, to a situation in which the practices of izangoma are accepted, and those of the abathandazi banned. Clearly this situation has arisen despite the valuable work done on the role of izangoma and abathandazi in resolving psychiatric disorders as well as in treating mental illness (See, for example, Chavunduka, 1986: 70-71; Peek, 1991; Kiev, 1964; Maclean, 1971).

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In conclusion, the ‘normalisation’ of indigenous medical practices may produce far-reaching changes in the practice of indigenous healing. While ‘normalisation’ may mean that indigenous medical practice benefits from the advantages of ‘scientific’ medicine, since the ‘normalisation’ is based on an old understanding of indigenous medical practice and does not take account of its transformations and commodification, they may not provide practical solutions to people’s problems. And, since, even those advocating for cooperation, the envisaged ‘co-operation’ is not between equals, indigenous medical practitioners will be forced to adopt the procedures of ‘scientific’ medical practitioners. As a result, indigenous medical practitioners may find themselves as the junior partners in the South African medical field.

Notes 1. In their practice, abathandazi invoke both the beliefs in African cosmology and cosmogony as well as Christian beliefs.

2. Imithi is plural for umuthi. Umuthi can refer to a big tree or medicines produced from the ingredients of that tree. While umuthi refers to medicines with bad results, over the years, it has come to be used to refer to all forms of medicine.

3. They are known to sell ‘Lotto Luck’, ‘Casino Luck’ and ‘Horses Luck’ medicines that they claim have powers to make the purchaser win the gambling games.

4. The encounter between the early missionaries and indigenous healers was such that all indigenous healers were referred to as wizards and witchdoctors.

5. The severity of the drought was such that South Africa received an IMF Compensatory and Contingency Financing Facility of $850 million to support “the balance of payments following decline in agricultural exports and the increase in agricultural imports caused by the prolonged drought” (Padayachee, 1997: 31-32) 6. A market for indigenous medicines at eMatsheni, which was situated at the Victoria Street beer hall was closed by the Durban Corporation in 1920 after complaints from doctors, pharmacists and amakhosi (traditional leaders). Today’s ‘Muthi Market’ on Russel Street over the Warwick Junction was started in 1990 and formalised in 1998.

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7. People in the township normally hear of an operation when something has gone wrong with it. There is not much interesting and, therefore, talking about, in an operation which went without a hitch. The Zulu word for an operation is ukuhlinza, a word which is also used to refer to the act of killing and cutting open a cow, goat or sheep.

8. Africans believe that the spirits of the dead live among us and that the dead, who know all and see all, can be conjured to speak to the living.

Abalozi (ventriloquism) is one way of conjuring the dead.

9. An article entitled “Human parts that heal”, based on hearsay, provides an example of how the alleged practices within a small community can be presented as though they applied to the whole country. (Mail & Guardian, 09 December 1994). Another article had prices for various body parts (Mail & Guardian, 08 October 1998).

10. For example, the electricity parastatal (Eskom), was reported to be recognising medical certificates from indigenous medical practitioners (Select Committee on Social Services Report, 04 August 1998).

References Bryant, A.T., 1966, Zulu Medicine and Medicine Men, Cape Town, C. Struik.

Chavunduka, G. L., 1986, “Development of African Traditional Medicine: The Case of Zimbabwe.” in African Medicine in the Modern World, Edinburgh, Centre of African Studies.

Cunningham, A.B., 1992, “Imithi IsiZulu: The Traditional Medicine Trade in Natal/KwaZulu”, MA Thesis, University of Natal-Durban.

Hutchins, A., 1999, Zulu Medicinal Plants: An Inventory, Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press.

Institute of Natural Resources, 1998, “The Marketing of Indigenous Medicinal Plants in South Africa: The Case of KwaZulu-Natal”, Institute of Natural Resources Investigation Report No.29, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

Kiev, A., (Ed.), 1964, Magic, Faith and Healing: Studies in Primitive Psychiatry Today, New York, Free Press.

Maclean, U., 1971, Magical Medicine: A Nigerian Case-Study, London, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.

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Mare, G., Hamilton, G., 1987, An Appetite for Power: Buthelezi’s Inkatha and the Politics of `Loyal Resistance’, Ravan Press, Johannesburg.

Njiro, E., 1999, “Witchcraft as Gender Violence in Africa”, presented at the Legislative Reform Conference, Pietersburg, 28-30 November.

Nthai, S., 1999, “Witchcraft Violence: Legislative Framework”, present ed at the Legislative Reform Conference, Pietersburg, 28-30 November.

Padayachee, V., 1997, “The Evolution of South Africa’s International Financial Relations and Policy: 1985-95”, in Michie, J. and Padayachee, V., The Political Economy of South Africa’s Transition, London, The Dryden Press.

Peek, P.M., 1991, African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

Ralushai, N.V., 1996, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft Violence and Ritual Murders in the Northern Province of the Republic of South Africa, Pietersburg: Northern Province.

Sitas, A., 1986, “Inanda, August 1985”, South African Labour Bulletin, (11-4).

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Zulu Divining Rituals and the Politics of Embodiment YongKyu Chang 1. Ukuthwasa divining ritual Divining initiation rituals, known as ukuthwasa among the Zulu, signify more than particular individuals’ accomplishment of becoming fully fledged diviners. More significantly, the initiates become totally reborn in the process. Ukuthwasa is an event during which candidates break away from their previous lives, and become new beings that are recognized as inhabiting (or having privileged access to) the divining world.

This paper provides an analysis of the ukuthwasa ritual through which Johannes Manzini of KwaNgwanase [1] entered the Majoy divining sodality. I will highlight how these rituals are examples of transformation in the politics of the body, relating the initiation process to Johannes’s many attempts to overcome his marginalization. Entering the divining world after undergoing extensive training is also a passage between two social conditions, in which the membership of a quasi-professional sodality fills the cultural gap between the individual and the social realms. Divining rituals serve to alter the candidate’s identity and consciousness, at the end of which she or he gains a new social status. As such the entry into divination practice is a micro-level response to conditions in the macro-level world structure. Indeed, the change often requires that initiates take on a new name; in Johannes’s case, he adopted the name “Delani” after a great-grandfather who was a divining ancestor, and thus responsible for Johannes’ divining talent.

2. Body and Social Memory Emile Durkheim (1995: 15) once made the laconic statement that “man is double,” signifying the simultaneous but none the less distinctive individual corporality and collectively social properties of human being.

The social condition is formed in the collective representation of individual bodies in various social institutions, i.e. religion, politics, history, etc.

Durkheim did not consider these two dimensions of body as antithetical: instead, they interact. The human body is the epitome of social mechanism, memorising social events and reproducing social text through the diverse 41

representations of the human body. The individual body reacts against history, and historical events are codified through the representation of the individual body. Durkheim’s essential insight is that the individual body is born of social process itself, both containing and being transformed by social processes.

At the level of everyday life, however, this explanation seems insufficient; the difference of scale between the individual and society is too large. The sheer size of social institutions places them at too abstract a level when compared with the scale of individual physical bodies. This raises some questions: are there any effective social mechanisms that would bridge these two dimensions of society? If so, what are they and how do they work? This paper argues that divining rituals can provide some answers. As I will illustrate in Johannes’s case, Zulu ukuthwasa divining initiation rituals play a decisive role in bridging the two levels. In the following sections I will analyse ukuthwasa after providing a summary of Johannes’s life story, stressing the social marginalization and successive life crises that drove him to heed the call to enter the world of divination.

3. Divining in KwaNgwanase Analysis of the mutual dependency of the individual body and social collectivity is not generally considered a viable project in the anthropological tradition. Probably the best example of where this has succeeded is Paul Stoller’s (1995) work, in which he analysed Hauka possession rituals at Tillaberi, Niger. He defines spirit possession in terms of the politics of embodiment, as a contemporary reaction to previous colonial experiences expressed through bodily possession by a foreign spirit (Hauka). Similarly, John Janzen (1995) argues that ngoma possession reflects the contemporary relationship between different ethnic identities. Walter Ong’s (1988) study of spirit possession on the shop floor of multinational factories in Malaysia is of particular interest to this study, in that he views spirit attacks on factory female labourers as a tactic for negotiating improvements in their working conditions. Jean Comaroff (1985) distinguishes between two distinctive rituals, initiation and Zionist, to demonstrate the viability of bodily transformation. In the former the body transforms into an adult, while in the latter (the Tshidi Zionist cult in South Africa) the initiate becomes a new person.

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The subject of this paper is an uniquely Zulu divining sodality, membership of which confers an exclusive social professional status on the diviner. I show how some members have skilfully used their entry into the sodality to transform lives that had previously been marginalized. In these cases the candidate diviners have borne considerable personal and social suffering, entering the sodality to overcome these conditions and to take on a new identity. Initiation rituals are designed to test whether the candidate’s body can put up with the rigours of the discipline. The candidate’s body and its textual transformation are therefore central themes in the rituals. Instead of being a passive medium, the body of the candidate “presents itself in substance and action rather than simply being an implement for reflection and imagination” (Lock, 1993: 142). The body not only carries social memories, but enacts them accordingly.

3.1. Ukuthwasa, textual meaning The term `ukuthwasa’ covers the whole period of transformation from recruitment and apprenticeship, to the final ritual performance that confers status as an authorized diviner. The root word, thwasa, has the following meanings: 1) to emerge for the first time; 2) to become possessed by a spirit; 3) ‘witch doctor’ during apprenticeship; and 4) change of season, moon, or personal state (Doke and Vilakazi, 1990: 812). The essential meaning that underlies the above definition is the emergence of a new status or condition. Applied to divining training, it suggests that a once-ordinary person emerges mystically transformed after the rituals.

There are two ways of explaining how an individual becomes a diviner (isangoma). Usually, the diviners themselves provide explanations in which they, once stable members of society, experience a mystical calling or vocation to the profession. Acceptance of the calling sets a ritual segregation from society in motion, although the calling itself has already set the affected person apart from others. Divining training is therefore a period of transition during which the candidate (ithwasa) discards his/her previous social status, preparatory to entering into the specialized professional status of a diviner. This explanation stresses the will of the divining spirits, from which candidate cannot escape. Once the spirits have selected a particular descendant, all the characteristics of the deceased diviners (now 43

divining spirits) are handed down through the special procedures of divining training. Becoming an isangoma is therefore seen as a way of confirming a privileged personal relationship between the diviner and a deceased relative.

Here we must note that there is a considerable gap between what people say and what they actually do. The second explanation provides an alternative sociological understanding: that divining training is a voluntary choice of the candidate. From this point of view, a mystical link is established between a divining spirit and a particular descendant , shifting the level of consciousness from the personal to the social. The practice of divination is a public undertaking as much as it is a personal realization, for divining training transforms an individual’s social being into that of a protector of society (Hammond-Tooke, 1974; Krige, 1985: 297). Novices enter the divining world as desperate and socially marginalized persons. The training gives them the means of altering their consciousness in the context of a mystically-charged environment (Berglund, 1976: 151). Van Gennep’s (1960) conceptualization of the “rite of passage” (1960) is a useful frame of reference, in that rituals are traditionally bona fide thresholds between social conditions, life and death, and so on.

The question is, therefore: when and for what purpose does a person choose to undergo divining training rituals to become a diviner? Is it purely a vocational obligation the person should follow? Or is there any hidden purpose in becoming the diviner? As I have already noted, the anthropological tradition has understood that mystical vocation was the leading explanation of this. However, my research data confirms an additional situational explanation: that the divining profession is an option for the modification of individuals’ social identity.

3.2. The Story of Johannes Manzini Johannes was born in 1964 in the village of KwaGeorge in the KwaNgwanase region of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. His father passed away when he was still a child, leaving his mother to bring up three sons and a daughter. Because her only means of livelihood was a small farm with gardens around the homestead, Johannes and his two older brothers were 44

forced to leave school in order to help. Already this represented something of an accepted rite of passage, since many of the men of KwaNgwanase drop out of school to seek employment. At the age of 25, Johannes left school with a standard 7 education and went to eMpangeni, a township near Durban, where he worked in a sugar refinery for several months. Although he secured a clerical job, and avoided the rigours of manual labour, the salary was low. He and his brothers therefore went to Johannesburg in the hope of obtaining better employment. He remained in Johannesburg for seven years, but his brothers returned home after failing to get jobs.

Johannes moved from one factory job to another, before deciding to attend a security guard training course in 1994. After three months’ training, he was awarded a certificate and employed as a security guard at a large factory. However, the salary was too low to support his mother and unemployed brothers.

Then, in 1995, he received an urgent message from home saying that his two brothers had died in a motor accident. Not satisfied with his new job, he decided to return home. Once there, he found it impossible to obtain employment. He had also married, because he needed someone to care for his ageing mother. In desperation he even fished for a year, despite small returns and the low opinion in which the people of KwaNgwanase held that trade.

His inability to find employment gave rise to family quarrels, and in 1995 he consulted a diviner about his troubles. This was the first occasion on which he was advised to undergo divining training. The diviner also foretold that he would divorce his wife. As the diviner had predicted, he divorced and remarried two years later (1997). Johannes then consulted a second diviner who also advocated divining training, and a third diviner confirmed this. Because Johannes desperately wanted to know what his ancestors required of him, he finally went to Jabulani’s homestead to request a fourth divination.

On this occasion, Jabulani and his own father diviner (who had trained him) arrived at Johannes’s homestead to perform ukufemba (ndawo divination), in the course of which Johannes’s great-great-grandfather was rendered (mystically) present to berate him for not heeding his demand that he become a diviner. He was told that the death of his brothers was entirely 45

due to his non-compliance, and that he was to proceed immediately with divining training.

By most accepted standards, Johannes might have been assessed a social failure at this stage of his life: he had not completed his education; his brothers had died; and he was both unemployed and divorced. His poor family background had created a vicious circle, and at the age of 35, he had achieved nothing. Johannes seemed to be taking the final option for his life: becoming a diviner. Although the advice to do this had, of course, come from diviners themselves, the decision was totally left to Johannes. Having already shown a preference for Jabulani’s divining pattern, particularly its dance forms, Johannes entered Jabulani’s homestead.

Johannes underwent divining training for fifteen months beginning in April 1998, under the guidance of Jabulani of the Majoy divining school.

The reason Johannes chose Jabulani to be his guide and mentor was that he liked Jabulani’s divining and dancing (gida) style. He paid R450 at the beginning of the process, with further sums at regular intervals -for example, R100 when he first performed divining dance. Altogether, his divining training fees were R2,000 with an additional monthly outlay of R80 for food. At the outset, he also had to supply two chickens (male and female) by means of which he could report to his male and female ancestors.

Ukuthwasa is compulsory for becoming a fully-fledged diviner, a cardinal marker that sets diviners apart as a distinctive group. As such, it is a form of professional legitimization. The training leads up to a series of ritual processes in which candidates master complex divining techniques and acquire practical knowledge of various afflictions, herbal medicines, and appropriate remedies. It is only after the proper acquisition of these skills that the novice is deemed qualified to practice as an authorized healer.

Most novices complain of physical and mental illness, known as divining affliction, with common symptoms being pain in the sides, headaches, black-outs, and so on. A number of scholars have used chronic ailment, even mental disorder, as the context within which to interpret the phenomenon of divination training, and its relevance to social competence 46

(Berglund, 1976; Buhrmann, 1984; Hammond-Tooke, 1955, 1962; Hunter, 1936; Janzen, 1992; Junod, 1927; Krige, 1943; Krige, 1986; Lee, 1969).

Hunter argues that “it is certain that the preliminary to initiation ceremonies is always severe illness, and divining training (the performance of the initiation ceremony) is regarded as the only cure” (1979: 320). Some psychologists and pathologists define divining training as a kind of mental and physical affliction common among the Zulu (particularly females). Lee (1969) and Berglund (1976: 122) draw on psychological and bio-psychological approaches to describe it. Psychological anthropologists give priority to this training in the recovery of health (Lee, 1969; Burhmann, 1984).

Although my field data also supports the ethnographic description, divining training is in any case regarded as a process of healing in Nguni societies, where people customarily ascribe a causal relationship between health and illness, on the one hand, and the mystical and social milieux on the other. In many cases, an individual’s physical affliction is believed to have been caused by provoking a lineage ancestor. In this sense, it is a kind of punishment for the descendants’ wrongdoing. Divining training differs from this, however, in that the afflicted is usually innocent of any offence, or is at least not a first-hand offender. She or he is afflicted simply because the divining spirits want them to become diviners. This is why some anthropologists describe ukuthwasa in terms of `training’ (Berglund, 1976; Krige, 1985). Berglund however admits a twofold aim for the ritual: first, to restore personal health which it is assumed has been affected by the divining spirits, and, second, to induct the people into the profession of diviner. The illness is a badge of election that singles out an individual for special service to the community. As she or he surmounts their own illness through ukuthwawsa, so the ritual empowers them to heal the afflictions of others.

Buhrmann (1984:26) correctly notes that there is no physical affliction without psychological and sociological causes and there is also no mental affliction without some disturbance of somatic functions. The treatment, therefore, strikes a balance between individual physiology and social influences (Buhrmann, 1984).

4. Analysis of the ukuthwasa ritual Johannes’s divining initiation rituals were held at Jabulani’s 47

homestead. Once ritual satisfaction had been expressed regarding Johannes’ s readiness, and the time and place of divining training settled by mutual agreement, Jabulani had to make certain preliminary arrangements. Being a diviner of fairly recent provenance, he first had to consult and enlist the help of Hloza, the Soweto diviner who had ‘fathered’ him two years previously.

Jabulani visited Hloza and ordered a new set of divining bones (amathambo) and a divining switch (ishova) for Johannes [2]. Secondly, Jabulani had not been long in independent practice and had not yet planted his pair of sacred trees (impande: literally a branch, in this case of the calpurnia shrub or marwa tree, known as umzilazembe). One branch representing the female divining ancestors is placed within the divining hut (umsamo), and the other outside in the yard to represent the males. This reversal of the normal association of male ancestors with the inside and female with the outside signifies gender unification. At the same time, Johannes’s family had to bear the cost of beer and other drinks; food; sacrificial animals for the event; providing clothes for the ancestors; and transportation for guests at the initiation, as large an attendance as possible in an impressive show of support for Johannes [3].

In KwaNgwanase, the divining training ceremony lasts three days.

The first day is for arousing the ancestral spirits; the second exclusively for endowment by ngoma spirits; and the third is set aside for the reception of ndawo spirits. This three-day sequence replicates in public a compressed ritualisation of the whole process of transformation from an acutely afflicted individual into a diviner. It effectively re-enacts all the stages of a rite of passage, from the setting-apart of someone weakened by calling spirits, through a transitional period of purification and skills-acquisition, to a state of proficiency and full spiritual empowerment. These steps are not replicated in an exact sequence, but they are nevertheless recalled or enacted, sometimes repeatedly, during the course of divining training.

The first day’s ritual (ukuhlela) is a thematic return to the candidate’s entry into divining training, the underlying meaning being that of withdrawal and retirement. No less then twelve diviners (seven of them being female) from the Majoy divining sodality (impande) assembled in Jabulani’s divining hut at eight in the evening. Jabulani and the other divin48

ers first placed all his bead accessories (necklaces and bracelets, even items adorning the wall) on a red cloth (the ibayi won by diviners) spread on the floor of the divining hut, and carefully wrapped them up in the cloth which he then placed behind the recently erected impande (sacred branch). This action symbolised the massing of divining power in support of the emerging diviner. Seated cross-legged in the centre of the divining hut and facing a fully attired female diviner, diviner and novice presented mirror images of each other. Johannes held a knobkerrie in his right and a spear in his left, while the diviner held the knobkerrie in her left hand and a spear in her right. When signs of spirit possession began to appear, the whole company erupted into song and drumming. After about fifteen minutes of possession convulsions, his partner broke off the dance (gida) for a short rest, during which she and Johannes stretched and flexed their legs. The dance resumed, punctuated by regular breaks and with other female diviners (and eventually Jabulani himself) taking turns as partners to Johannes. Some two and a half hours after it had begun, Hloza brought the dancing to an end and instructed the drummers to stop. Johannes was wrapped in a blanket and the assembly dissolved to consume a supper of tea and bread. All the diviners lay down to sleep, but Johannes remained propped up against the wall for the rest of the night. His spirits, having been aroused, could not be allowed to depart.

Preparations for the second day’s rituals began at eight in the morning and took two hours, which included digging a vomiting pit in the homestead courtyard. On completion of the preparations, Johannes was led out of the hut. The ritual sacrifice of a goat was carried out, with the animal stood against Johannes’s back for the act, after which he was subjected to a symbolic stabbing at the hands of Jabulani. Next, Johannes underwent a prolonged period of purging, using an emetic medicine. On completion of this phase, he was led back into the hut, while the goat was slaughtered and prepared according to ritual prescriptions based on Johannes’s choice of divining ancestor. He was then instructed to boil the selected portions of goat, after which he transferred these portions into a second specially prepared container. Johannes then ate these from the dish as a ritual assistant drew it into the courtyard, after which he underwent a further prolonged purging session. The afternoon was devoted to the imfihlo test, in which Johannes 49

was required to find hidden objects that his mentor and assistants had secreted in different places. In a trance state, Johannes carried out an interrogation of his teacher and assistant, after which he successfully recovered the hidden items. The ngoma ceremony closed with the performance of the diviner dance (izangoma gida). Johannes emerged from the divining hut, clad in full diviner attire, and danced solo for about ten minutes.

The final day, sealing the ceremony with the candidate’s domestication of an ndawo spirit, began early. Ndawo is a powerful entity without which diviners can claim no authority in KwaNgwanase. The combination of ndawo with the domestic ngoma spirit in the KwaNgwanase sodality is unique, and the third day of the initiation ritual is devoted to cementing the ngoma-ndawo alliance [4]. Although the senior diviners were to officiate, all the visitors from the Majoy sodality were woken to act as witnesses [5].

When preparations had been completed, the novice and the assembled company made the thirty-minute walk to the Mahlambane River (hlamba literally means “wash, swim and undergo purification”). In a freshly prepared clearing on the river bank, two chickens were sacrificed over Johannes, who then completely immersed himself in the water for almost a full minute.

When he came out of the water, his eyes had a stunned look about them, clearly a good symptom indicating that Johannes’s body had successfully invited an ndawo spirit into it. After drinking a freshly-prepared medicine, his body was subjected to ritual cutting on the forehead, tongue, joints, back and chest into which further medication was rubbed. On completion of this Johannes dressed in full ndawo attire and the ceremony was effectively over. It had taken hardly thirty minutes. The party returned to the homestead, where Johannes demonstrated his ndawo possession and dance.

The officiating diviners then declared their satisfaction with the ceremony and pronounced Johannes to be a member of their sodality. The formal closing ceremony began in front of the divining hut, with only those who had officiated at the ndawo ritual in attendance. Here the gall bladder (inyongo) of the sacrificial goat was attached to the back of the new diviner’s head as a symbol of legitimacy. The party then moved to the ritual arena (ikandelo) where three holes were cut in the middle of the sacrificed goat skin, one for the head, the others for the arms, and Johannes was invested with this 50

goatskin vest (imindwamba). A final round of incisions brought the proceedings to a final conclusion.

The three days’ ceremonies developed four major interrelated themes: sacrifice, purification, communion, and confirmation of powers.

That the goat sacrifice took place on the shoulders and back of the divinerto-be, closely followed by a symbolic enactment of his own death, indicated both a strong connection between him and the victim, and that in a sense he was himself a sacrificial victim smeared in blood. His symbolic death expressed the loss of his previous identity and his dedication to the service of his ancestral spirits in his new role of diviner. His body was then purged and purified of the remaining dross of his old existence in readiness for being joined to the world of spirit. The communion rite required him to consume those parts of the sacrificial goat that most closely identified him with the presence of the afterlife that is home to the divining spirits. The effect of these ritual actions was that he symbolically became assimilated to his ngoma guiding spirit. That Jabulani partly joined in this communion in a display of community was both a recognition, and a strengthening, of the spiritual bond that had been forged between them during the period of seclusion and training, and would continue to define their future relationship.

Finally, the change that had been ritually wrought in Johannes had to be publicly authenticated in a test of his prowess, that this ngoma spirit has indeed given him the power to reveal what is hidden and to make visible what is absent. Only then could he show himself before all, in full regalia, as a legitimate diviner.

Both ritual and process are essential to the diviner’s training; both are human symbolic constructions; and each displays its own inherent pattern and structure. Here I provide my interpretation of the structure of the culminating ritual before turning attention to that of the longer divining training process. We have noted how the second and third days of the ritual are dedicated to the activation of the two kinds of spirits (ngoma and ndawo) that together complete the spiritual armoury of the KwaNgwanase diviner. The first day lays the groundwork for this by sparking the novice’s capacity for spirit possession in the company of the family (impande) of diviners which is receiving him or her as a “bride”. During this ceremony 51

the candidate’s biological family attends as witnesses. The ritual proceeds with the pooling of the assembled mystical resources (beads) and the devolution of this collective power to the individual candidate, who must then remain apart to assimilate what (s)he has received. The identity and nature of the spirit possession remains indeterminate, lending credence to the supposition that the candidate has been primed, or charged like a battery, with the spiritual force of the diviner family.

The two forms of spirit infusion differ radically from each other in that where the ngoma possession occurs in the ritual spaces of the homestead, a significant part of the ndawo rite is conducted at a river. As nature, or a wild place, a river is appropriate as the abode of undomesticated spirits, who by definition do not belong to any known family or descent group.

They are outsiders to the mystical economy of the home, which falls under the supervision of ancestral ngoma spirits. The latter, although they are not disposed to harm, need to be cultivated to prevent their slipping away and leaving their diviners exposed. On the other hand, ndawo spirits inhabit a realm beyond the ambit of cultural norms, and are seen as dangerous predators who can indiscriminately attack and harm the unwary. Only persons revealed by divination to exercise a legitimate claim may approach them, and even then the encounter is not without risk. In a sense, they must be seduced and pacified with the offer of a family and a home. The movement in the third ritual from homestead to river and back again is therefore to fetch and domesticate these wayward foreign spirits.

The logic of the second and third ceremonies follows a procedure which might be interpreted as achieving ever-closer familiarity, intimacy and unity with the spirit(s) concerned. Stripped down to essentials, the ritual sequences are: Day 2 (ngoma): Sacrifice -- Purification -- Communion --Possession Day 3 (ndawo): Sacrifice -- Immersion -- Incision -- Possession We have already noted the role that sacrificial animals play in these sequences. The sacrificial method used in these rituals sets them apart from other ancestral sacrifices, because in this case the candidate is in close proximity to the victim and is drenched with its outpouring blood. This is a clear 52

statement of identity, an act of self-immolation in which the candidate offers his/her life to the spirit. During the ngoma rite this is followed by rigorous purging to attain a state of purity suitable for sharing with a divining spirit, but comparable purification is omitted from the ndawo ritual. Although immersion may be interpreted literally as a form of cleansing, there is no need for bodily expulsion of any possible remnant of evil influence: the body is already sufficiently cleansed to receive the ngoma spirit(s). Instead, the immersion is as much a form of communing with ndawo spirits as was eating the sacrificial meat in which the ngoma spirits are said to share.

Further opening to reception of the ndawo spirit takes the form of incisions (caba). Not only do the cuts provide access for the spirit, but they are also fortified with strong medicines because of the inherent danger of the undomesticated ndawo spirits.

The culmination of both days’ rituals takes the form of the initiand’s possession by the respective spirits accosted in each ceremony. The two climaxes differ, however, and this reflects the distinction between the two kinds of spirit. On the one hand, the candidate puts his or her ngoma possession to the test in the form of the smelling-out ritual. On the other hand, it is only possible to speculate about why the ndawo possession of the final day requires no proof. The candidate’s exposure to the ndawo divining spirit, compared to his or her exposure to the ngoma spirits, comes about rather suddenly towards the end of training. Moreover, the ndawo divining performance (ukufemba) demands a degree of theatrical ability, mimicry, and variation of voice in which the novice apparently receives little or no training.

These rituals are just the end-phase of a broader social process, one that begins with the individual’s decision to answer the calling and submit to the tutelage of a chosen diviner. It is essentially a transformative process which takes place in four distinct dimensions before the candidate’s actions become independent of it. These are: 1) transition from a state of physical and psychological affliction, to an achieved state of personal well-being: a once-stricken person becomes an adept and a healer; 2) a raw recruit is processed into a ‘fully cooked’ (ritually empowered) diviner; 53

3) movement from inherited and imposed social disability, to publicly endorsed professional proficiency; and 4) in what is probably the most crucial component of the change, the transformation proceeds from manifest control by spirits to a demonstrable capacity to control spirits. From being the plaything of calling spirits and suffering their impositions, the novice patiently learns how to control them until as a diviner they can be summoned at will to carry out his/her work.

These transformations are effected in several complementary ways.

Most obviously, they are achieved by removal of the candidate from society into a protracted period of seclusion, that is only terminated when he or she is integrated into an elite social corps. Secondly, they are achieved by discipline and training in techniques of disorientation and introspection. The third way is through the observation and accumulation of pragmatic knowledge about medicines and procedures. Finally the transformations are certified by medium of the ritual endowment of the diviner’s authenticity.

6. Ukuthwasa rituals and the politics of body: why enter the divining profession?

While much has been made, quite legitimately, of the processing of a raw recruit into a fully fledged diviner, I want to avoid the implication that the novice merely submits passively to the impress of events without exercising any influence on the outcome. There is sufficient evidence to show that the process does not suppress the elements of agency and choice, but that these elements are inextricably entwined with it. Clearly, the trainer has more freedom for making decisions; but this does not mean that the novice has no resources for swaying a decision his/her way. The process thus can be seen as an interaction between the two, a low-key battle of wills to control the more crucial decisions, most notably in identifying of the calling spirits, and even in calling the ndawo spirits. Here, the training diviner initially has the edge in being able to pluck revelation from spirit possession.

But, as the novice grows in experience and confidence, (s)he can play the trump card of personal truth revealed in dreams. To illustrate how this works, I will briefly relate the case of Gugu, a female novice whom I interviewed twice during her training, with a three-month interval.

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In the first interview, she related how the isangoma who became her trainer revealed that her calling came from Gugu’s maternal great-grandmother. Paradoxically, the latter had reneged on her own calling and, after an abortive attempt to pass the burden to Gugu’s mother’s sister, had settled on Gugu herself. At that stage Gugu professed no knowledge of who her ndawo spirit might be. Three months later she had drastically changed this account. She had produced her own ndawo legend from her dreams, in which he had revealed himself as an unusually dark-skinned Sesotho speaker, a traditional healer who had been killed by Gugu’s maternal forebears for supposedly practising ‘black magic’. His terrible revenge had led to the death of five of her mother’s siblings, but he now wished to negotiate reconciliation through Gugu. On the basis of her dreams, Gugu had switched her calling spirit from the maternal to the paternal line.

To understand this reversal, we need to appreciate Gugu’s family situation. Because her parents were unmarried, she took her surname from her mother. On the other hand she was counting on her father’s financial support to see her through her apprenticeship. In her dream, her paternal grandfather told her that he was “frustrated with the name Nkosi (her mother’s surname). They must marry soon. Your father is responsible for everything until you come out (of divining training). He must build a hut for your (his) ancestor”. Gugu used this dream to prevail on her father to make a down payment on lobolo, sufficient to allow her to change her name to Hlatswayo. Gugu’s agency in this is all too clear, and in the second case she had successfully negotiated a personally advantageous change of guiding spirit.

Personal motives may also play a significant part in the way individuals choose to respond to the calling itself. It is clear from virtually all the diviners’ life histories I have recorded in KwaNgwanase, of which Johannes is typical, that they had ignored or resisted the suggestion that their suffering constituted a calling, maintaining the semblance of a `normal’ social life for some indefinite period. What, then, constitutes the crucial moment in which they actually decide to follow the calling? Clearly, their general condition had not suddenly become so unbearable that they could claim (as they do) to see no other way out.

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It appears likely that, at least in part, economic considerations tilted the balance between escaping from the calling and escaping into the calling. Their reduced circumstances were thus a precondition they could parlay into a route to economic betterment. Clearly, the story of Johannes (Delani) supports this interpretation. For an initial capital outlay, admittedly quite steep under the circumstances, one gains access to a potentially lucrative form of self-employment. Indeed, the returns from the business of professional divining are far from insignificant. Moreover, once the business has been successfully established, there is nothing to prevent the diviner from diversifying into other ventures. In depressed rural areas like KwaNgwanase, therefore, the divining profession is itself a form of entrepreneurial activity that can provide an ideal platform for further entrepreneurship. Perhaps more acutely than other entrepreneurs, however, the diviner is caught on the horns of the entrepreneurial dilemma: balancing the ideal of public service with the pursuit of self-interest.

7. Conclusion South Africans have found that the social wounds of the past are too deep to be healed in a short time. Furthermore, the country is faced with a critical social crisis in which many significant social statistics have indicated a deterioration of conditions: the official unemployment rate has increased from 19.3% in 1996 to 25.2% in 1998; the Human Sciences Research Council estimated that murder, rape and burglary could go up 25% between 1998 and 2005; the number of people infected with HIV is escalating exponentially; and the private think-tank Idasa (Institute for Democracy in South Africa) recently announced that child poverty in South Africa is increasing, particularly among African children living in rural areas.

Traumatised by a culture of violence and the catastrophic AIDS epidemic, the South African social body (in Durkheim’s sense) is searching for new cultural answers. Because macro-economic factors have limited the state’s capacity both to deliver on development needs and to meet the social challenges of transformation, small-scale social groups are beginning provide alternative methods of coping. The revival of traditional rituals provides a good example of this tendency. Faced with the escalating AIDS 56

epidemic, Zulu traditionalists have revived virginity testing (Mail & Guardian, 29 September 1999). Female bodies so certified are highly sought-after in some quarters, and prized in terms of future marriage negotiations. Public shame and pride are simultaneously guaranteed through new or revived rituals. It is not surprising that political symbols and practices are saturated with religious references to social healing and reconstruction: ritual stands at the centre of it.

Notes 1. KwaNgwanase, where I conducted field research into divining practices, is located in the north-eastern part of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

2. In the Majoy divining sodality (impande), the diviner seeking qualification must foot the bill for these items, about R1,500 for the bone set and about R500 for the switch.

3. The cost of mounting such support is formidable, especially in the context of slender family resources. Johannes had no income, apart from a monthly pension of R359 from the company that had employed him and his mother’s pension of R500. Clearly, they would have had to rely on financial input from other kin.

4.“Ngoma-ndawo alliance” is a term I have coined to encompass the special character of the KwaNgwanase diviners. Generally, a diviner is simply known as an isangoma, but “ngoma-ndawo alliance” indicates the unique spiritual union between two different groups of divining spirits.

5. Impande (divining sodality) literally means “roots” and can be interpreted as a “divining family”. Members have a symbolic kin-relationship, such that once a divining candidate has successfully testified and becomes a diviner, (s)he becomes a “daughter” of a training diviner. The training diviner in turn becomes “father” (baba) diviner to the divining candidate.

As training diviner to Johannes, therefore, Jabulani is his sodality father.

Likewise, Hloza is Jabulani’s sodality father. The symbolic kin-relationship built in this way means that Hloza, Jabulani and Johannes all belong to Majoy’s ancestral line. Membership does not entail the obligations and duties associated with ordinary kin structures, but members observe a tight unity in order to compete with other divining sodalities.

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References Berglund, A.I., 1976, Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism, C. Hurst and Company, London.

Breidenbach, P.S., 1976, “Colour symbolism and ideology in a Ghanaian healing movement.” Africa, (46).

Buhrmann, M. V., 1984. Living In Two Worlds, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town.

Comaroff, J., 1985, Body of Power and Spirit of Resistance, Chicago University Press, Chicago.

Doke, M., and Vilakazi, B.W., 1990, English-Zulu, Zulu-English Dictionary, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg.

Durkheim, E., 1995, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, (translated

by Karen E. Fields), The Free Press, New York.

Hammond-Tooke, D., 1955, “The Initiation of a Bhaca Isangoma Diviner”, African Studies, (14), pp 17-21.

Hammond-Tooke, D., 1962, Bhaca Society, Oxford, London.

Hammond-Tooke, D. (ed), 1974, The Bantu-speaking Peoples of Southern Africa, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Hunter, M., 1936, Reaction to Conquest, Oxford University Press, London.

Janzen, J.M., 1992, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa, University of California Press, Los Angeles.

Janzen, J.M., 1995, “Self-presentation and common cultural structures in Ngoma rituals of southern Africa”, Journal of Religion in Africa, (xxv).

Junod, H., 1927, The Life of A South African Tribe (Two Volumes), University Books Inc., New York.

Krige, E.J., 1985, The Social System of The Zulus, Shuter & Shooter, Pietermaritzburg.

Krige, E.J., 1980, The Realm of a Rain-Queen, Juta & Company Limited, Cape Town.

Lee, S.G., 1969, “Spirit Possession among the Zulu”, in J. Beattie and J. Middleton (Eds) Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp.128-156.

Ngubane, H., 1977. Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine, Academic Press, London.

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Ong, W., 1988, “The Production of Possession: spirits and the multinational corporation in Malaysia�, American Ethnologist, 15(1), pp 28-42.

Stoller, P., 1995, Embodying Colonial Memories, Routledge, London.

Turner, V., 1967, The Forest of Symbols, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London.

Van Gennep, A., 1960, The Rites of Passage, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

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60

Traditional Healers and the Fight against HIV/Aids in South Africa Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala Introduction The story of AIDS in South Africa is a story about what happens when a disease leaps the confines of medicine and invades the body politic of an entire society. Appearing at the dawn of democracy with its promise of a new South Africa where everything would be possible, HIV/AIDS presented itself as a complex plaque with confounding social, economic and political meanings that locked together to accelerate the virus’ progress. The country’s social dynamics and cultural belief systems colluded and continue to collude to spread the disease and help block effective intervention.

Today South Africa bears the dubious distinction of having the world’s fastest growing rate of HIV infection with an estimated 1700 people daily falling prey to the disease. With an estimated 4,3 million South Africans infected (July 2001) with HIV, the epidemic is undergoing a transition from having been largely an epidemic of increasing HIV infections to currently becoming an epidemic of increasing AIDS related illness and death (UNAIDS 2000). National hospitals estimate that over 30% of their available beds are occupied by patients with AIDS. Likewise mortuaries are said to be overflowing and cemeteries are rapidly filling as funerals of AIDS victims have become more frequent than funerals of victims of violent death that characterized the final years of the apartheid struggle (Drum 2000).

As the epidemic continues to ravage the country, it becomes increasingly evident that diverse strategies must be adopted in order to confront the wide-ranging and complex social, cultural, political and economic environment in which HIV continues to spread. In this context, the role played by South Africa’s estimated 350 000 traditional healers in the fight against HIV/AIDS is of considerable importance. It is a widely accepted fact that over 80% of the population seek the advice and care of traditional healers in times of illness, and this does not preclude their simultaneous use of modern western medicine. As elsewhere in Africa, traditional healers in South Africa are well known in the communities where they work for their expertise in treating many sexually transmitted diseases (Green 1994).

Consequently since the early 1990s, the World Health Organization (WHO) 61

has advocated the inclusion of traditional healers in national reproductive health and AIDS programs (UNAIDS 2000).

No doubt South Africa’s traditional healers have been amongst the fastest to implement their roles in combating what many still refer to as this “new disease”, HIV/AIDS. Yet, that role continues to be only marginally appreciated by the modern South African biomedical fraternity, a fraternity that essentially controls the politics of AIDS and determines the direction of national policy in relation to the disease. However, there are positive signs indications that the work of traditional healers in fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS in South Africa is increasingly being acknowledged and they are increasingly being sought after by their biomedical trained counterparts to assist in a concerted effort to manage the ever-growing epidemic.

This paper considers the work of traditional healers in the context of AIDS in South Africa and the challenge faced by practitioners of two very different medical systems in working with each other to address this deadly disease of pandemic proportion. While it is widely acknowledged that the work of these healers cannot be discounted, it is difficult to quantify the details of how and in which ways this work can be counted as a truly significant contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

Approach Avoidance The coming of Christian missionaries to South Africa several centuries ago marked the beginning of western medicine’s attempts to discredit and destroy traditional healing systems that were then in existence (Schemlink 1953). The concerted forces of western-style education, health delivery, job training, employment practices, land tenure systems, town planning, housing patterns and a multitude of other less obvious influences all conspired to pull the African away from his traditional way of life and cultural beliefs.

Apartheid government decrees of last century added to the onslaught of forces aimed at ‘modernizing’ the ‘Natives’ and drawing them into the cash economy at whatever the costs. Throughout the apartheid era the National Party government took a stance to actively suppress traditional medical practitioners (Maier 1998). Nonetheless, as elsewhere throughout the world official government stance did little to suppress its practice or to uproot the 62

complex and deep allegiance that the African people held in relation to their beliefs and the traditional healing system that they support.

In 1986, for example, during the height of the “total onslaught” decade of the apartheid regime, South African traditional healers took it upon themselves to form a National council made up of 150 smaller associations of healers (Freeman 1992). Since then there have been numerous attempts to form more inclusive umbrella-type bodies of healers, and these bodies have experienced mixed successes in terms of representativity and sustainability over time. Currently there are a large number of organizations that organize and register traditional healers in South Africa. Yet there are also a large number of healers who are not registered at all, and many of these actively resist efforts to register them. To organize or not to organize has been an ongoing debate amongst traditional healers for many years. With the dawn of democracy in 1994, the need to organize traditional healers has become an urgent cry from some circles, most especially from the Government health ministry.

The new post-apartheid government has shown every intention of building bridges between the modern medical system and the peoples’ own traditional medical system. Government discourse has been a discourse of cooperation, collaboration and incorporation of the healers and the healing system that has been undermined and de-valued throughout South Africa’s history. President Mbeki’s vision of an African Renaissance has been a vision of African people taking pride in their cultural beliefs and practices and being free to practice them. Thus, in many ways the democratic era has re-defined the ideological terrain around traditional healing and has opened the way for exploring ways to combine the medical systems in the forging of a truly pluralistic medical delivery system. The clarion call of the government is for the country’s 350 000 healers to “get their act together” to foster greater cohesion amongst themselves before further discussions on their roles in health delivery in the new South Africa can be debated and discerned at the level of national policy making. While the question of formalizing structures and having clearly defined bodies, constitutions, practice guidelines and ethical codes makes sense from the point of view of government planning for quality assurance of health delivery, there are other con63

siderations. As Freeman (1990:14) pointed out formalization may be seen to be, and may in fact be, the beginning of the end for traditional healing. Not withstanding the fear that efforts to legitimize its practice may eventually prove to be its undoing, nobody, including the healers themselves, believe they have much choice. To become more equal and effective partners in health delivery and the provision of care for the increasing cadres of AIDS patients, it seems that formalized structures and umbrella-bodies are necessary. As this paper is being written there is currently a new initiative under way to form provincial councils of traditional healers throughout the country. Once these structures have been formally constituted and officially recognized by the provincial health ministries (planned for the end of 2001), they will meet to select members for a new national council that will act as representative for all of South Africa’s traditional healers. This national body would thus find a home in the National Health ministry and engage in policy making for the country’s official health provision service.

Healers, Aids and Bodies Formally, constituted ‘bodies’ of healers featured early on in local efforts to engage South African traditional healers in the fight against AIDS. With the financial backing of foreign funding a project was started in 1992 to train an initial group of thirty traditional healers in AIDS prevention (Green 1994, 1995). The strategy was to train this initial set of healers as trainers, who would each train a second group of thirty healers who would then repeat the cycle. The initial five-day training covered topics of STDs and HIV transmission, prevention, condom use, infection control, and issues of death and dying. A decision to invite only healer participants who were formal members of associations claiming national membership was taken by the project’s co-coordinators (Green 1994). In effect to ensure that every major region in South Africa was represented, five healer associations were identified and selected to participate. Eighteen of the trained traditional healers reported having trained 630 second-generation healers in different regions of the country seven months after the first training. A preliminary evaluation of this second generation focused on seventy trained healers selected from ten geographically representative sites (Green, 1995). Ninety percent of them thought that the demonstration of correct condom use was the most useful aspect of the workshop. These healers had correctly retained basic 64

information on gonorrhea, HIV as an infectious agent, HIV symptoms, and modes of HIV transmission and prevention. Of eighteen healers who said they had treated cases of AIDS, three mentioned giving advice and counseling to their clients without being prompted (Green, 1995). When prompted, the other fifteen described promoting positive attitudes about people with AIDS, or showing care and understanding as the type of advice or counseling given, while eight mentioned advising on condom use (Green, 1995). The assessment concluded that the first generation of trained traditional healers selected and trained their peers for the second cycle more effectively than the western-trained trainers of the first generation, as the traditional healers’ selection was less politically directed and the training more culturally appropriate (Green, 1995).

By all indications this initial strategy to educate healers in a biomedical understanding of HIV/AIDS had been successful in getting traditional healers ‘on board’ in a concerted effort to make people more aware of this growing threat of HIV/AIDS. While that original project came to a halt by the mid 1990s, the basic model and strategy used to teach traditional healers about HIV/AIDS has been replicated successfully by other organizations in the country, most especially by the AIDS Foundation of Durban, that continues to be the foremost organization training healers in HIV/AIDS prevention and care in KwaZulu-Natal province, the province most profoundly affected by the epidemic. Unlike the original ‘project of 1992’ that worked through a singular organized body of traditional healers, the AIDS Foundation has taken a conscious decision to not make membership of a traditional healers’ association a requirement for participation in HIV/AIDS training. This was done in an effort to reach a greater number of healers and most especially to mitigate against rivalries between and within existing associations that still present formidable barriers against healer registration and organization.

In essence, the training curriculum for South African traditional healers in AIDS has included the following: · General facts about HIV/AIDS · Information about the local HIV/AIDS situation · Identification of harmful practices and how to replace these with 65

·

· · · ·

safer alternatives Diagnosis of STI’s and other HIV-associated illnesses (for example tuberculosis) and when referral to, and treatment at, a biomedical health facility can help Condom use and promotion Counseling, including talking about sex to people of different ages and gender Home-based care Collaboration with biomedical health practitioners and facilities.

The overall aim of their training and the measure of their effectiveness has been an assessment on the extent to which the healers are able to do the following after their training: · To provide STl/HIV information · Increase awareness around HIV/AIDS issues · Promote and distribute condoms · Report and register deaths in the community · Register orphans in the community · Provide support for tuberculosis · Give spiritual and psychological support · Support people in disclosure (breaking the news about their HIV status to partners and family) · Provide home-based care · Counsel people and encourage them to adopt safer sex behavior · Improve referral to biomedical health services.

Beyond training Long before the AIDS epidemic South African healers were known for their efficacy in treating a variety of illnesses including sexually transmitted diseases. Continuing this tradition, many people with HIV/AIDS approach traditional healers for not only physical treatments, but for spiritual and emotional healing as well. This situation persists, even when people have adequate access to other health services. As respected members of the community, healers are also very powerful educators. They have influence, and the potential to change their clients’ behavior. Most often traditional healers see their patients together with other family members. As a result they play an 66

important role in family counseling and reducing stigma as well as discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS. Family counseling has the added advantage of strengthening family ties, a variable that has been linked in its inverse negative relationship with “risky� behaviors such as promiscuity and UN-safe sex practices.

In addition, traditional medicines and health practices have been shown to help alleviate symptoms (such as pain or itchy skin rashes), strengthen the immune system (by restoring appetite and general well-being), and treat the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS (AIDS action 2000). One product in particular known locally as unwele (sutherlandia frutescens subspecies microphylla) has shown such promise in treating a variety of AIDSrelated conditions. It has been recently been packaged in a modern tablet form and its proponents are currently touring the country to garner support for its production and distribution on a much wider scale. This medicinal plant has been used since time immemorial by traditional healers to treat various illnesses. Modern western medicines to treat AIDS are still financially beyond the reach of most of South Africa’s 4,3 million HIV positive people. Thus finding and developing an indigenous medicine that can at least be used to alleviate some of the suffering caused by AIDS is seen by many, both traditional and modern-oriented practitioners, as a national priority. While there is an urgent need for more clinical research into traditional medicines in order to develop guidelines in preparation, use and side effects of particular medicines, there are also some hopeful signs. In November 2000, a group of biomedical doctors, social scientists, ethno botanists and an array of other complementary practitioners and other health workers met at the University of Natal Medical School in an effort to launch an initiative that would foster closer working relations with local traditional healers. Since that time the group has met several time to examine the obstacles that prevent closer collaboration between the different types of practitioners and to work out ways to surmount them. Of prime importance to members of this new project known as the Traditional and Complementary Health Initiative (TCHI), is finding ways to bridge the gap between traditional medicine and biomedicine in order to improve HIV prevention and AIDS care. Early in the decade the University of Cape Town set out to collect and analyze the pharmacological components of plant sub67

stances used by local healers to treat illnesses, including those related to AIDS. This program known as TRAMED aims to establish a national database on the pharmacopoeia and use of traditional plants (Karim 1994).

Most often the type of treatment given by local traditional healers to AIDS patients consists of a variety of bitter herbs which the patients are told to infuse with boiling water and drink as a tea. This drink is said to cleanse the system and help restore the patient’s appetite and stop diarrhea. Skin sores and rashes which are common local conditions that present themselves as AIDS-related, are treated with a salve or cream made with a Vaseline or aqueous cream base, various pounded herbs, and an addition of flowers of sulfate to prevent the sores from becoming infectious. While these substances could be seen as relatively standard practice in treating AIDS-related conditions, there are also many others that healers are often reluctant to describe or discuss, because they view them as a type of ‘secret recipe’, that attracts clients and is used as the healer’s unique trade-mark substance against AIDS. One example is a healer from the KwaZulu-Natal South coast who boasts a medicine to cure AIDS made from a certain small red fish that is only found in one particular hidden river which he and he alone knows the existence of. Treatment by this healer with his special red fish medicine would cost about R2 500, about two month’s wages for an average South African labourer. Recently there have been reports of dubious ‘healers’ selling drinks at local taxi and bus ranks of some dark liquid substance for 40 cents a glass. A glassful is said make one ‘strong’ and to prevent HIV infection. Selling this brew to people waiting in long queues in the hot sun for transportation is no doubt a highly profitable business. One could even buy a whole bottle for R50 to take home to one’s family or to share with one’s partner.

As the AIDS epidemic grows and matures, so too are the numbers of people calling themselves healers who are proclaiming to have treatments or cures for the disease. In this context one realizes the necessity for standardizing training, licensing and the formation of and an identification with formal traditional healer structures. People will increasingly need to be protected against what seems to be a proliferation of people who proclaim to be healers and are making false claims of AIDS treatments and cures.

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The challenge The challenges faced by traditional healers who are willing and able to do their utmost in a united effort to combat AIDS in South Africa are many.

There is still much resistance within the modern medical fraternity to working with healers. Many western-style doctors dismiss still these healers and their practices as either unimportant or actually harmful. They point to the false claims of AIDS cures and the potential danger or side effects of untested medicines. Often times it is the attitude of black medical practitioners within the modern sector who present a major obstacle, as they are often the most outspoken when it comes to dismissing the traditional healers as perpetuators of “superstitious” beliefs. By all local accounts the vast majority of healers profess to want a closer working relationship with the modern sector. The problem they say lies in the paternalistic attitudes of modern medical personnel. Healers have long been making referrals to modern practitioners when they believe a client’s illness may best be treated by a western doctor. With HIV/AIDS, healers are continuing to do the same, especially when tuberculosis or pneumonia is suspected.

As the message of HIV/AIDS has spread into rural areas via radio, television and the printed media, traditional healers have increasingly come to realize that they themselves are at high risk for contracting HIV from their clients. Many have voiced this fear during AIDS education workshops, and have debated ways to replace potentially harmful practices with safer options. The practice of using the same razor blade to make incisions on the skin of a number of clients for rubbing in herbs, has been identified as potentially increasing the risk of HIV transmission. Likewise the practice of using the same sewing needle or porcupine quill to give a type of indigenous ‘injection’ is a high-risk practice. Healers who have undergone AIDS training and have learned about infection control have come to understand the risks of infection associated with these practices. Many healers today advise their clients to bring their own razor blades or needles when coming for a treatment. The practice of biting the skin of clients to remove foreign objects from the body, or touching and manipulating open wounds have also been identified as hazardous. Efforts have been made to have healers find alternative treatment methods. Nowadays it is not unusual to find traditional healers, especially those who practice in the urban areas, carrying out their procedures while donning a pair of protective latex gloves.

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The question of the sustainability of the traditional medical industry has recently come to the fore as more and more healers are cutting and chopping down more and more of the indigenous plant resources for their practices. Sewsunker (1999) estimates that the South African traditional medicine industry is worth about 2,3 billion rand a year. As the AIDS epidemic continues to grow, the demand for traditional treatments will also continue to grow, and this is starting to become a worrying factor for both the healers and the environmental scientists concerned with conservation. Healers from KwaZulu-Natal rural areas complain that whole forests of indigenous plants have become depleted in the past decade, a problem they say is related to healers providing all manner of treatments for HIV/AIDS. Healers say that many ‘dubious’ fellows who claim to be healers are simply cutting down everything in the name of experimenting with ‘cures’ for HIV/AIDS. Such a scenario will no doubt have serious environmental implications for the future if it is allowed to continue.

As the traditional healers adapt their practices to the changing face of the AIDS epidemic, they are confronted with new challenges, many of which demand the intervention of other kinds of practitioners and professionals.

With increased AIDS morbidity and mortality, healers are demanding to have more training in home-based care. Healers want to be in a position to instruct family members of an AIDS client on how best to care for their sick and dying relatives at home. Traditionally, healers would often take a sick client into their home in order to treat him and care for him until he was well enough to return home. Now healers are seeing that with AIDS the patient’s health deteriorates progressively until death ensues. From the point of view of business, the healers try by all means not to have a client die on their premises. They say that this will have the effect of frightening off old clients and potential new clients who will question their treatments and avoid consulting them in future. In addition the healers believe that a death on the premises will seriously disturb the spiritual environment of the healing premises that will need to be ‘cleansed’ and ‘put right’ before any subsequent healing can take place. Still the healers say that clients will be wary of receiving treatment in premises that have been ‘polluted’ by the shadow of death. For these reasons, healers are eager to have family members tend to their own sick and dying relatives, and they themselves are eager to acquire the skills needed to train community members in home-care.

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The new problem of AIDS orphans is yet another challenge being confronted and managed by many South African healers. Many healers have taken orphaned children into their homes and are caring for them as children in the homestead. Some healers have organized ritual parties for bereaved children to tell them that they still belong to the family and that their mothers and fathers are not gone but are still with them. In many instances healers have played a big role in communities where the stigma around HIV/AIDS and AIDS orphans is still strong. They have helped to make these children feel a part of the community and helping community members to accept these children as their own.

As the need for more burial land becomes evident with increasing AIDS’ deaths, traditional healers have been identified as potentially influential people who might help to encourage people to consider cremation as an alternative to a funeral that includes interment. Their role as guardians of traditions might make healers ideal candidates as proponents of cremation amongst a people who, since time immemorial, have buried their fellows in the ground. Perhaps if the healers are convinced that ancestral spirits will not be upset or averse to the idea of cremation, they could use their influence to get others to adapt and change traditional burial practices. For the time being, the issue of rising AIDS deaths and the rapid filling of available cemetery space has not really had an impact on communities. However, within the next decade, as death due to AIDS reaches its peak, changing notions around burial may become of real concern to many (Drum 2000).

Conclusion Although much of traditional healers’ contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS in South Africa has been undocumented and indeed much is immeasurable and unquantifiable, they have been part and parcel of the struggle against the disease since the start of the epidemic in the early 1990s. Their relations with the modern medical sector and its biomedical struggle against the disease is a dynamic relationship that is shaped as much by attitudes as by available resources and official policy. As South Africa is currently poised to begin medical trials for an HIV vaccine, there are currently efforts underway to engage healers in this project at least, to help monitor and maintain health records of trial participants. As the AIDS epidemic matures, the role of the healers will change and the demand for 71

their services will certainly increase. As South Africa opens up to the rest of the world, so too has the role of medicine in society changed.

Increasingly South Africans are embracing alternative therapies and medicines borrowed from other cultures. The medical system in South Africa has become more inclusive and more pluralistic since the end of apartheid.

Against this trend comes the glaring need for South Africans to move towards a greater understanding of and appreciation for their own traditional healing system. While eagerly incorporating ayurvedic practices from India, or acupuncture from China, or shiatsu from Japan or drumming or chanting from some American Indian groups, South Africa as a society needs to do more introspection when it comes to its own indigenous ways of healing.

Perhaps it will be in their quest for more self-knowledge in healing that will foster the growth of national pride, self esteem and a collective sense of self worth that is a necessary part of nation building. Nourishing the development of South Africa’s ‘body politic’ in this way may by itself go a long way in empowering people to accept the reality of AIDS, and thus take the steps needed to fight this most potent of post-apartheid aggressors, the HIV/AIDS virus.

References AIDS action, June 2000, “The Role of Traditional Healers”, n°46, p 2.

Drum magazine, “AIDS Corpses Piling Up”. November 2000 Freeman, M., 1990, Is there a role for traditional healers n the health care in South Africa? Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Health Policy, Department of Community Health, University of Witwatersrand Freeman, M., (compiled conference proceedings), 1992, Recognition and registration of traditional healers: possibilities and problems, Johannesburg, Centre for the Study of Health Policy, Department of Community Health, University of Witwatersrand.

Green, E., 1994, AIDS and STDs in South Africa, Durban, University of Natal Press.

Green, E., 1995, “The participation of African traditional healers in AIDS/STD prevention programmes”, AIDS Link, 36: 14-15.

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Karim, S. S. A., 1994, Bridging the gap: potential for a health care partnership between African traditional healers and biomedical personnel in South Africa. Medical Association of South Africa.

Maier, K., 1998, Into the House of the Ancestors: Inside the New Africa, New York, John Wiley & Sons.

Schemlink, F., 1953, Mariannhill: A Study of Bantu Life and Missionary Effort, Mariannhill, Mariannhill Mission Press.

Sewsunker, K., 1999, “Indians like African healing�, Sunday Tribune, 25 April.

UNAIDS, 2000, Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (IDS): Switzerland.

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CONTRIBUTORS The authors met during 1999 on the initiative of Véronique Faure. During her stay at UND from 1998 to 2000, Faure had developed an interest in the field of healing and politics, and offered a platform for local researchers and PhD candidates working in different fields and disciplines to share views.

The team met informally until IFAS provided the financial support necessary to develop the programme further. This issue of the Cahiers de l’IFAS is – with the invaluable input of A. Shepperson in the final edition - the result of phase 1 (2000) of the programme “Bodies and Politics, healing rituals in the democratic South Africa”.

Yong Kyu CHANG, from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea, has a MA in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics (1994). Chang has written his doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology at the University of Natal Durban under the supervision of Professor J. Kiernan.

His work deals with spirit possession among traditional healers in KwaNgwanase, north of KwaZulu-Natal. He lectures in anthropology at the Seoul University.

Dr Véronique FAURE is a full time researcher at the Centre d’Etude d’Afrique Noire, Bordeaux, France and sometime editor of the annual survey in African politics: l’Afrique Politique. Since 1989, she has successively been working on the construction and mobilization of South African identities, on political transformation, violence and occult crime before moving on into researching the relationship between political and physical healing in the country. Her last major publication (2000) was a collective book on religious trends in Southern Africa.

Dr Suzanne LECLERC MADLALA, after having conducted research in Gabon, has been lecturing in anthropology since 1985 at the Universities of Durban while working extensively on Gender and AIDS in South Africa.

Her area of expertise is the interface between illness and culture. She has been involved in the training of Traditional healers in AIDS, conducted research on the re-interpretation of western pharmaceuticals amongst Zulu people, and on the symbolic meanings of the AIDS epidemic within the local population.

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Arnold SHEPPERSON, a PhD candidate in the Cultural and Media Studies Programme at the University of Natal, learned his editing skills while he was senior engineering safety inspector for a large mining machinery company in the 1980s. His present studies focus on the normative grounding of social institutions, and the challenges that transformation poses to the received conceptions of these norms, based on his experience in mining and manufacturing.

Michael URBASCH finished an M.A. in English Literature in 1988, after which he taught and researched in various departments at Natal University, Durban. More recently he completed a M.A. in Applied Psychology (2001).

The paper presented here derives out of a literature review on Western representations of African traditional healing systems, and interviews leading to a research thesis on the « Representations of traditional healing amongst trainee interns in counselling psychology ».

Thokozani XABA holds a MA in Sociology (1990) and is a Phd candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches and is a researcher at the School of Development Studies, University of Natal, Durban. His doctoral thesis is concerned with the collision between African cultural practices and modern civilization, represented by ‘scientific medicine’, and how this has an overwhelming and lasting impact on the health and lives of African peoples. He also examines the questions of intellectual property rights to indigenous medicines and their appropriation by international pharmaceutical groups.

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