Tribal Healers Politically much more Powerful in South Africa now

Submitted by Adriana Stuijt:

January 22 2009 - All the schooling at two South African village shools has been disrupted for a week --after five tribal seers, “sangomas’ , placed a spell on the school with traditional ‘medicine’ or muti. All the residents in the village of Sefikile near Mogwase in North West Province were immediately gripped by fear and anger and withdrew their kids from school.

The parents now demand that a 'cleansing ritual' must be carried out by these five traditional healers -- which could take as long as a week.

North West province's education department spokesman Charles Raseala said the irate parents withdrew their children from both schools when five sangomas showed up, chanting in the local Venda language, and planted spells.It's not known what this muti (traditional medicine) spell consisted of.

Growing political power of the SA witchdoctors:

This incident is only one of a great many recent examples which illustrates the growing political power of the witchdoctor, the 'traditional healer', the ‘sangoma’, the ‘traditional seer’ in South African politics. And they are growing equally powerful in the medical world. see and see and also see

The South African tribal seers' power has grown ever since September 2004, when a law was passed to register the estimated 200,000 'traditional healers and seers', giving them equal status as medical health-practitioners in South Africa.

This Act has given the traditional healers a strong political power-base – backed by law. There are many incidents now in which local 'traditional leaders', aided by the witch-doctors, have been taking over political hegemony of entire rural regions in South Africa.

And this is the tactics they use: showing up at schools, community halls and even police stations to plant muti-spells – which then forces terrified communities to carry out 'cleansing rituals'. This serves to establish their local power base - and these traditional healers usually work under the direct orders from a local tribal leader or councillor.

There are about 200,000 traditional healers registered under this Act - which was enacted with only one opposing parliamentary vote during the reign of the AIDS-denialist, former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in the previous Mbeki-cabinet.see

Reports are published daily in the SA news media now about incidents where local and even national politicians use witchcraft – ‘traditional African seers and healers’ - to establish their power base.

Read entire article here http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/200...

Source Url: http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2009/01/tribal-healers-increasingly-powerful-in.html

Posted By: JoAn
*AfricanCrisis Volunteer*