SANGOMAS! In South Africa, Traditional Healers Who Claim To Treat AIDS Are Legally Recognized Nationwide

Sangomas, the South African traditional healers, mainly work in the rural areas of the country. Since 2007, they have been legally recognised in South Africa as ‘traditional health practitioners’.

They have a large clientele and claim to be able to treat AIDS and cure bronchitis or asthma by using plants and bones of animals.

SouthWorld.net met with Ngungune Michonto, a 63-year-old woman who is a professional sangoma. She defines the trade: “A sangoma is like a doctor,” she explained in Zulu language.

“We can cure many things: headache, chest pain, knees, we can treat cancer … We make medicines with plants and bones of animals.”

It is difficult to have reliable figures on how many South Africans prefer to consult a sangoma instead of being visited by professional doctors trained in Western sciences.

According to a report published in February last year by the local newspaper The Daily Maveric, 80 percent of South Africans, some 46 million people, may have consulted one of the 200,000 sangomas currently working in the country.

According to other sources instead, only 3% of the population, just over 1.5 million people, use traditional healers as their primary source of health care.

All sources, however, confirm that traditional healers operate only in rural areas. HIV/AIDS is the most serious health concern in South Africa. The country has the highest number of people afflicted with HIV than anywhere else in the world.

Around seven million people are affected by HIV in the country, the equivalent of 19% of the adult population of the country, and there are more than three million orphaned children, many of them because of AIDS.

People infected with HIV, who are from rural areas and whose education rate is low, often go to traditional healers to be cured. According to Michonto the sangoma, herbs are used to treat HIV.

“As for HIV we operate like for the other diseases, we prepare medicines for our patients with herbs and plants,” she says. “It takes me between two weeks and one month to prepare the medicine for a person affected by HIV, and the person needs the same period of time to heal.”

“If the person doesn’t get better, I suggest that they consult another sangoma or they go to the government hospital, in order to see if they can be cured there,” she continued.

Sangomas are legally recognised, under the Traditional Health Practitioners Act of 2007 alongside herbalists, traditional birth attendants, and traditional surgeons.

The act of 2007 called for the establishment of a national council of traditional health practitioners to regulate and register sangomas in the country.

According to this law, sangomas must be South African citizens and be positively qualified in the schools of sangomas in order to be legally recognised and have permission to practise as sangomas.