The Transmission of Knowledge in South African Traditional Healing

‘Traditional healers’ ( sangomas ) in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, are organized into ‘schools’ around a senior teacher ( gobela ). Healing is understood by its practioners to be a profession, not a religion or even a spiritual exercise. Healers actively assess the effectiveness of their healing methods, transmit their knowledge to each other, and evaluate each others’ performances in ways that stray far from the mere transmission of ‘tradition’. Clients are likely to pay sangomas as much as they would medical doctors for their services, which are not limited to the medical. Their practices can be divided into roughly six ‘disciplines’: divination, herbs, control of ancestral spirits, the cult of foreign ndzawe spirits, drumming and dancing, and training of new sangomas . The status of sangoma is achieved through an arduous process of teaching and learning through which the student or initiate is simultaneously ‘healed’ and educated to become a member of the profession that coheres around these knowledge practices.