Ancient wisdom, mystical spirits, visions and dreams, complimented by natural forces, bones and herbs are the weapons of a sangoma, traditional healer of Southern Africa. In the city of Johannesburg, skyscrapers and shining towers make shadow over an ancestral religious practice. The sleeping forefathers of humankind thrive inside human passions and possess their priests in a violent entanglement that allows the healers to cure and bless their patients. When the ancestors awake inside her, she will vigorously shake and loudly growl in a powerful and mysterious scream. The presence of the ancestors will take over her body, clearly announcing their arrival. Out of confusion and fear, she will consult the Elders and find out that she has a gift. An ancestral calling. She will become a letwasana, a student of traditional medicine, and she will graduate as a sangoma after six months of rigid training under the supervision of a gobela (an experienced mentor and teacher). Through her training, the letwasana will learn the code of conduct of a healer, the use and meaning of beads, the function of herbs and medicines, the so-called muthi. At the end of the training, the initiate will undergo an intense ‘graduation’ ritual called intwaso. This is how Mama Maria, a woman from the Pedi people born in the city of Phalaborwa, at the doorsteps of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, describes with dread and respect the ceremony of intwaso: “I am a Christian and I don’t support witchcraft,” she says, “but these spirits…
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