Talking with the white: sharing the experiences of white sangoma in contemporary South Africa

The phenomenon of whites who have graduated as sangoma - the ancestrally guided spiritual healing system of South Africa - has become a contemporary cause celebre, a matter for academic and popular debate (de Bruyn 2004; Dowson 2001; Wreford in progress). In some circles the idea is dismissed as inconceivable (Masiba 2001): Other sangoma optimistically embrace the introduction of whites to their ranks as a natural and positive innovation. Biomedicine meanwhile generally dismisses sangoma healing ideas and practice and thus ignores the potential advantages of co-operation with this parallel healing system on which between 60 and 80% of the majority population still depend (Pretorius 1999). This paper examines white sangoma in the context of the social and political conditions of contemporary urban South Africa. Sources for the paper include my personal experience of training and graduation as a sangoma, as well as material gathered from black African sangoma, and, more recently, from white initiates and graduates. The paper examines whether these healers represent a hybrid phenomenon, a development of tradition as a 'changing same' (Clifford 2003: 113) or, as their critics allege, yet another version of colonial exploitation (Mndende 2001), and asks how white sangoma see themselves, how their supporters, mentors and clients view them, and how they respond to their critics. Finally, the paper suggests that whatever their categorisation, there may be a fruitful role for white sangoma in effecting a more collaborative relationship between biomedicine and traditional healers in South Africa, particularly in the face of the AIDS pandemic ravaging the country

'We can help!' - A literature review of current practice involving traditional African healers in biomedical HIV/AIDS interventions in South Africa

This review describes the available research literature involved with efforts at collaboration between Traditional African Healers (TAHs) and biomedical practitioners in HIV/AIDS interventions in Southern Africa. The paper draws on academic texts including published and unpublished research papers, books and reports, and press comments on the subject. The focus is on Southern African literature, but selected texts from elsewhere on the continent are also included. The paper interrogates, in particular, the roles assigned to more spiritually inspired practitioners, such as sangoma, in these interventions. The paper considers the effects on relationships between biomedicine and the traditional health sector and explores some of the obstacles in the way of successful future collaborations. The analysis addresses the following questions: What are the roles assigned to sangoma and other traditional health practitioners in biomedically constructed HIV/AIDS interventions to date? What has been the experience of sangoma and traditional health practitioners of these interventions, and how have biomedical professionals involved in these interventions responded to the traditional health practitioners? What factors contribute to negative responses where these occur, and how might these be addressed? Could the roles of sangoma and traditional health practitioners be enhanced to improve the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS interventions

Ukusebenza nethongo (Working with Spirit): the role of sangoma in contemporary South Africa

This thesis represents a typically boundary-crossing ethnographic experience and an unconventional anthropological study, its fieldwork grounded in the author's personal experience of ukuthwasa - initiation, training and graduation - to become a sangoma, a practitioner of traditional African medicine, in contemporary South Africa. The study is contextualized within the contemporary health dispensation in South Africa in which two major paradigms, traditional African healing, considered within the spiritual environment of sangoma, and biomedicine, operate at best in parallel, but more often at odds with one another. Given the unprecedented challenge of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country, the thesis suggests that this situation is unhelpful and proposes first, that a more collaborative relationship between medical sectors is vital. Secondly, the thesis suggests that anthropologists can play an important role in achieving an improved dialogue, by producing research grounded in the spiritual aetiology of sangoma but comprehensible to academic science and applicable within collaborative medical interventions. The thesis introduces 'sacred pragmatics' to embody the disarmingly matter-of-fact quality of sangoma healing which is nevertheless always underpinned by the authority of ancestral spirit solicited in terms that are reverent. Ancestral authority in sangoma is advanced as a credible near equivalent to Jung's 'collective unconscious', and the contemporary phenomenon of white sangoma is proposed as a potential source of social and political healing. In the light of the spiritual foundation of sangoma, the absence of spirituality in biomedicine is discussed and its effect on relationships between medical sectors analysed. The umbilical and ambiguous connection of sangoma and witchcraft is acknowledged, a relationship theorised as having transformative potential within kin and community. The theoretical arguments are set against the evidence of fieldwork which is characterised as experiential and described reflexively. The thesis constitutes a start in what the author hopes will develop into an ongoing conversation between traditional African healing, academe and biomedicine in South Africa