With their designer clothes, Brazilian hair and on-point makeup, younger traditional healers are rapidly changing the public’s perception of sangomas.
The word sangoma used to conjure up images of barefoot healers in traditional garb, chanting and waving an ishoba. It was an image that inspired awe and respect – and a healthy measure of trepidation for those uninitiated in their ancient and mysterious ways. Nowadays it’s as easy to find a sangoma on YouTube as it would be to find one in a rural village, far off the beaten track. The modern sangoma is as likely to have an ishoba (a fly whisk made from the tail of a wildebeest or cow) as they are social media accounts or a YouTube channel. With their designer clothes, Brazilian hair and on-point makeup, younger traditional healers are rapidly changing the public’s perception of sangomas – with some being serious slay queens too! DRUM speaks to three young women about being the changing face of traditional healing.

REA KHOABANE

Law student and journalist Rea (31) graduated as a sangoma in January but she has no intention of changing her lifestyle. “I appreciate my calling but I was born as Rea,” she tells us. “Should I walk around barefoot when my ancestors chose me, knowing that I appreciate the finer things in life?” In answer to her question, the Welkomborn gym fanatic says the ancestors chose her knowing she wouldn’t be ditching her beloved stilettos or any of the other favourites she flaunts on Instagram. Rea comes from a long line of healers. Her grandmother, Mamphete Khoabane, was a sangoma and when she stopped practising, the gift passed down to her children, but they didn’t accept it. “And so it passed to the next generation.” Rea and her younger sister, Busisiwe Hadebe (22), gave in when the ancestors came calling. But before Rea accepted her vocation, she went for counselling to prepare herself for the journey.

“My therapist once said there are people who I am chosen to heal but they are dying because I’m denying my calling.” The mother of one was at an initiation school in Virginia in the Free State for three months. “We weren’t allowed to sleep on beds. And we had to sit a certain way and show respect and I did all of that. But once you finish the process, I went back to my life.” Communication from the ancestors in dreams is filled with modern-day imagery, she says.

“I feel like they’re understanding and they have accepted my lifestyle.” When Rea graduated she was given the name Morongwa (“The one we sent”). Her life has changed, but she still enjoys partying with her friends. “I think I’m more content with myself now than before,” adding that she doesn’t stay out too late. “If I feel my ancestors want to communicate with me I leave immediately so I can receive their message.” She wears a certain doek when she goes to sleep to allow her ancestors to communicate with her. “When I was in Spain recently I forgot my doek and I didn’t have any visions so I went to an old chapel to pray.”

The next day she dreamt her mother was going to be in a car crash, so “I called her to change the route she uses to get to work”. She shares an anecdote from her time during training late last year, when she was scolded by her teacher for wearing sunglasses while learning about traditional uses for indigenous plants. It was early in the day but the sun was already blazing down so she put on her shades as she was digging up herbs. “I told my trainer, ‘I’m wearing shades, it’s hot, mama’,” she recalls. “So she told me, ‘You can’t wear shades – how will your ancestors see you?’” “She told me I needed to be pure. But I didn’t understand why wearing shades was not pure. My well-being comes first,” explains Rea, who also has two tattoos on her hand. “The outside doesn’t really matter. It’s what in your heart that matters.

LEE-ANN MAKOPO

Accepting her calling was a life-or-death decision for 32-year-old Lee-Ann. Doctors put her son, Mason, in an induced coma after he suffered severe seizures and told her that he’d be brain damaged if he woke up. At her wits’ end, Lee-Ann went to see a traditional healer who told her she needed to accept her calling to save her son’s life. So she did. “I did it for my son and I’ve no regrets,” she tells us. Mason (6) recovered fully and is now in Grade 1. For years she battled to conceive a child and after several cyst surgeries a healer, the late Luvo Hlathi, performed rituals that helped her to get pregnant. Lee-Ann, who isn’t shy to admit she loves partying and drinking bubbly with her friends, says it hasn’t been easy letting go of her love of the nightlife. “I’m still Lee-Ann before I am Maweni (her spiritual name). My ancestors drink Champagne because that’s what I drink. Did you not see that I use Hennessey and Cruz to speak to my ancestors?” The mother of three quit her job earlier this year to focus on her calling. “My ancestors don’t want me to work.”

FAITH MAFILIKA

The 27-year-old former party girl tells us her calling saved her life. “I used to party from Thursday until Sunday. If it wasn’t for my calling, I think I’d be dead by now,” the Pretoria-born healer says. She occasionally still goes out. “But I come back early as my ancestors only want me to attend things related to my calling.” This extends to fashion, and Faith listens to her ancestors “who don’t want me to wear pants”. But they don’t mind if she dons her wigs and colourful extra-long nails. “I was trained the old-fashioned way.

I have to wear an ibhayi (kanga) or a skirt as I was born into a family of healers.” Beer is her drink of choice, while her ancestors don’t mind the occasional tot of gin for ukuphahla (communicating with ancestors). Faith, however, doesn’t approve of everything some modern sangomas do. “I do not understand why people wear weaves at umgidi (sangoma cele- brations). There were no weaves back in the day.”

Poet and former TV presenter Lebo Mashile has shared some tips she has found useful in her battle with depression. The star has been candid about her struggles in the past and this week took to Twitter to offer some advice to those who might be feeling a bit of depression setting in during the Covid-19 lockdown. She said that two years ago she started “personifying” her depression, which helped her identify how much of a threat it is to her.

It looks like a dementor (Harry Potter) and I play a game with myself when I can feel myself getting dragged into the quicksand. I ask myself where my depression is & how big is it. It helps me gauge where I am.

“Sometimes my depression is outside sitting on the steps like a small child. Sometimes my depression is sitting at the dining room table watching me while I work. Sometimes my depression is in the audience at the gig. Sometimes my depression is a 7ft giant, wrapped all around me. She said it never really leaves her and she has learnt from an exercise online to talk to it.

“Something incredible happened. After I swore my depression, cried and expressed my frustration, the dark feelings gave way to the realisation that my depression emerged at a time when I did not have the tools to process trauma. Depression became the shield and the blanket for me.

Thread:

About two years ago I started personifying my depression. It looks like a dementor (Harry Potter) & I play a game with myself when I can feel myself getting dragged into the quicksand. I ask myself where my depression is & how big is it. It helps me gauge where I am.

— Bessie’s Head (@lebomashile) April 14, 2020

“Depression became the force, the energy, that took all the blows that I could not take alone. It was there through every single trauma. It wrapped me up when I could not face the world. Even when I hated it, my depression took on the hardest parts of my life without question. She said in speaking to her depression she realised what it was protecting her from.

“Since then I have been practising listening to my depression. What is it telling me that I do not want to confront? What blows is it shielding for me? What darkness is it absorbing that I am not ready to deal with? I can use my depression to teach me how to confront my own issues,” she said, adding that in doing this exercise her episodes became shorter and she did not lose her sense of agency.

A legal war has broken out between sultry television presenter Boitumelo “Boity” Thulo and her agency Ade Holdings Property (Ade Agency) over the model’s lucrative Huawei and SAB deals.

This after the revered rapper signed deals with Huawei and SAB to promote their brands without the consent of Ade Agency, which has a management and artist agreement with her.

Their imbroglio came to the fore when Boity launched an urgent application in the Joburg High Court for an order to terminate the agreements with the company.

In the papers, which Sunday World has seen, Boity said she wanted the management agreement she signed with the company in July 2018 to be terminated with effect from November 15 2019 and the artist agreement, which was concluded on August 9 2019, terminated with effect from December 2 2019.

In terms of the management agreement, Ade Agency was supposed to handle her bookings for live performances, sponsorships and endorsements, merchandising, marketing and licensing, among others.

“The respondent also had to undertake all reasonable endeavours in respect of my services for my benefit and to seek marketing and promotion as well as to broaden my profile in the market. The respondent, however, failed to do any of the marketing. What the respondent did was to wait for my initiatives with clients and only come in in order to sign the agreements and then cash in. This was in breach of the management agreement,” reads the papers.

Boity, the social media influencer with more than 2 million followers, said an example of Ade Agency reaping the benefits of fruits it did not cultivate was when it insisted on concluding her deal with Huawei Technologies Africa even though she had secured it without the agency’s assistance.

She said even though she allowed it to conclude the deal after the agency’s lawyers wrote to Huawei and said the company was not entitled to contract her directly as she was its client, it withdrew from the discussions.

Boity said her law firm Werksmans Attorneys wrote a letter to Ade Agency on November 15 last year informing it the agreement was terminated because there is no mutual trust between them.

But the company lawyers wrote back to her lawyers and accused her of being the one who had violated the agreement. “If anyone was at fault for breakdown of trust, it was your client, who has been unlawfully circumventing her agreement,” reads the letter.

She said her dispute with Ade Agency would bankrupt her if the court did not grant her a court order to terminate the contracts as the agency had withheld R272 000 that Huawei had paid to it.

The payment was for four posts she had made on social media before her contract with Huawei had been signed.

Boity could not be reached for comment.

-Sundayworld