Whites Embrace Traditional Healing in Swaziland

Panafrican News Agency

August 9, 2000

Posted to the web August 9, 2000

Mbabane, Swaziland

Some years ago, it was unusual to see white patients consulting a Swazi traditional healer or inyanga inside the grass thatched Indumba. Meeting a European trainee undergoing a gruelling two-year traditional healing training exercise, locally known as litfwasa, was also rare because this was associated with evil spirits.

Of late, however, things appear to be changing and an increasing number of white people are either consulting accomplished traditional healers for ailments or training to be traditional doctors themselves.  The whites normally consult local traditional doctors in the quest of traditional cures for illnesses that have defied modern medicine. This occurs specifically when they are seized by ancestral spirits and are obliged to undergo the gruelling traditional doctors' training called kutfwasa in siSwati.

Offering this training is the Luvenga Traditional Healing Clinic, located in the remote bushy area of Matsetsa, Lubombo region, in the heartland of Swaziland, owned by a prominent traditional healer, Petros Hezekiel Mntshali, affectionately called PH in his social circles. On an exploratory visit to this unique traditional clinic, this PANA correspondent found a tall slender white woman undergoing kutfwasa.  Dressed in a khaki jersey and brown woolen trousers, she said that Mntshali was still busy consulting with one patient.

Half an hour later, a pale frail white Frenchman emerged from the sacred consulting hut.  Inside Mntshali's hut were motley of his paraphernalia, including the "emahiya" cloth, gourds, barks, shells, skins, and bones.  He explained that he had been practicing traditional healing for the past 46 years, specializing in cancer, diabetes, and sexually transmitted diseases.

However, Mntshali's latest much-sought-after service, especially by members of the white community, is kutfwasisa, the gruelling traditional healing training.  He said that three white "graduates" have so far passed the course. The first of these was Anne Marie from Durban, South Africa. The second was American medical practitioner, Dr. David Cumes, while the third was a South African, Claudia “Freda” Rauber of Cape Town.

"I met Dr. David Cumes when I was in the USA and he told me that he felt like there was something lacking in his medical career. I wondered why he was not satisfied with their stethoscope. His only request was to come and train in Tinhlola-casting of bones to diagnose some illnesses," the Swazi traditional healer told PANA.

Asked how his white trainees cope with the gruelling two-year training, Mntshali observed that in fact they take a shorter training period than their black counterparts.  "With these white trainees, I have observed that everything depends on their ability to learn fast. For example, Freda really surprised us when she only took three months to complete her training," he said.  "She was also a marvel to watch during her graduation ceremony. She went straight to where her 'intfwaso' was hidden," he added.

On her graduation, Freda brought her friend, Josi Gorfinkel, whom the ancestral spirits also possessed on that day. Mntshali noticed that by her strange behavior during the graduation. "She looked so troubled that she would isolate herself from the others. She would then grimace with pain before weeping. We mentors could see that she had been entered by the ancestral spirits," he said.

Josi, who is from the Karoo in the Eastern Cape, informed the traditional doctor that the spirits during the graduation of Freda grabbed her. She said that ancestral spirits had always troubled her. "Though I studied and lived in many traditions in some parts of the world, I had never found any peace of mind. It's only in this tradition that I have found peace of mind," she added.

Asked whether she saw similarities or differences between modern and traditional beliefs, Josi said that terminologies were the only difference. While the traditionalists called on their ancestral spirits for help, people from the modern world prayed for assistance from spiritual guides or angels.  "I really don't see any striking difference except in the superficial nature. There is utterly no distinct difference between the ancestral spirits and angels because they act as guides for their own chosen people," she said confidently.

An agriculturist-turned-traditional doctor, Mntshali took part in the 18th Conference of the Environmental Education of Southern Africa, held at the University of Swaziland, early July. At this meeting, he took exception to claims by environmentalists that traditional healers were to blame for widespread deforestation. "We are not responsible for the widespread deforestation in the country. As the major users of trees, we have taken it upon ourselves to conserve the environment," he said.  “Are the people lining the roads with firewood traditional healers? These are just needy people who want money," he argued.

But it is only Petros Muntshali who knows how he has managed to draw whites to his ancient African practices, previously denounced as heathenish or paganism.