Sangomas’ desire to practice heavily restricted
Traditional healers denied accessing sacred places
Human Rights of Traditional Healers compromised
Section 15 of our Bill of Rights protects everyone’s right to freedom of religion, belief and opinion. Unlike the apartheid era, this section of our constitution liberates everyone to freely express and practice their beliefs.
Though the Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1957 had previously prevented practitioners of African spirituality from practising their craft, ubungoma is now recognised and legal.
However, for sangoma Honey Makwakwa (ancestrally known as Makhosi Nomabutho), being permitted to practice her beliefs has not always meant an acknowledgment of her human rights. She has found that her rights, and those of many in her field, are constantly compromised.
“It’s not illegal to be a traditional healer, but we still face various difficulties. For example, sometimes you’re spiritually shown a certain body of water that may be within a park and you have difficulty accessing it due to ownership issues.”
“With parks and rivers being either privately owned or municipal owned, we find ourselves having to compromise. In the end, traditional healers are people and our ancestors belonged to certain spaces. They have agreements with the spiritual overseers of those places. If we cannot access those spaces then we are being robbed and we’re being dehumanised,” she says.
The life and work of a sangoma is characterised by various sacred and spiritual experiences such as drumming and song. Furthermore, the slaughtering of an animal may take place on various occasions when blood sacrifice is needed by ancestors. Depending on one’s area of residence, these acts, which bear much spiritual significance to healers, aren’t always freely permitted.
“In the city, we are deeply affected. We are literally making life choices on freedom of spirituality based on where we are. We have to consider if living in a specific place will mean you will be bothered if you slaughter. And even while the police may not arrest you when they’re called, the fact that the harassment is still there is a micro-aggression,” says Makhosi.
With a constitution that fully protects her human rights on paper and perhaps not so much in her physical lived reality, Makhosi often finds herself questioning the progress made as far as the human rights of traditional healers are concerned.
“Our constitution is apparently the best in the world. But what has actually changed because when it comes to our right to freedom of practice, we are really being compromised? I think I speak for many in my field when I say that if you are a sangoma, you will still feel the impact of the Group Areas Act on your life today.”
Furthermore, the challenges and human rights violations sangomas experience also take place in many different spaces, including corporate, where their beliefs are often questioned.
“For example, if someone’s employer has a problem with their beads, that healer would have to take them off and leave them at home. If we’re saying that aspects of ubungoma appear unprofessional, then you’re questioning the validity of my personhood. If you’re saying that I look unprofessional, then you’re saying my culture is unprofessional. You’re saying my being is unprofessional, you’re saying my blackness is unprofessional,” says Makhosi.
Ultimately, Makhosi believes there is room for improvement regarding this matter where the government and laws are concerned.
“When the government said traditional healers could practice, they knew that rivers, mountains and access to certain spaces would be required. Medicine grows in fields, so they knew we would require access to those spaces. What freedom do we actually have if we don’t have freedom to be our black selves?”