Let traditional doctors heal in the Church

Traditional African religious practice and medicine has too long been vilified in the Christan church and should be embraced instead, argues LINO VINCO CSS.

It is regrettable that Christian churches have done little to study the traditional religious values of South Africa’s indigenous populations. The colonialist mentality and the superiority complex of most missionaries equated the local populations’ belief systems as immoral paganism, and religious practices as evil. Only relatively recently have we started to talk of inculturation, but sadly very few people actually try to really know the values which are the soul of African people.

One may question whether these values have retained their integrity after forced removals, forced labour and forced conversion. Did the churches with their education and their indoctrination eradicate whatever was African?

After 16 years of freedom in South Africa, do we see any of the traditional African values today?

The answer can be discouraging if you have been assaulted and robbed by youths looking for money and cars, as I have been three times. So where to look for these African traditional religious values, if there are any left?

Allow me to share my exciting discoveries. Mr Malibe was a popular traditional healer (witchdoctor) in the Jericho district in what is now the North West Province. In the 1950s he became a Catholic and was sent to do a catechists’ course.

He was presented with a crucial choice: if you want to be catechists, then you must give up your profession of traditional doctor. He did so, probably for the sake of a salary.

A few years later his daughter was bitten by a poisonous snake. With his knowledge of traditional medicine, Mr Malibe cured her. And secretly, he went on curing other people who needed his help.

I met this remarkable man in the early ’70s, when he was still forbidden to use the knowledge he had inherited to cure people. He introduced me to many other Catholic traditional healers who were practising underground, and others who had been suspended from receiving the sacraments. I started to spend time with them, to know what they were doing and why they were performing their rituals.

I was naïve in my approach, but that actually helped me to be free from prejudice and fear. This nonconformist pastoral approach taught me how important it is to know Christians before judging or condemning them. After all are we not all sheep of God’s flock? Why ostracise them from our associations and communion?

In the 1980s I received an anonymous letter, telling me to stop my contact with the “witchdoctors”. As a foreign  missionary, I supposedly could not be aware of the danger I was facing.

Thanks to God, my bishop was supportive and encouraged me to persevere. In 1985 — on the feast of St Luke, the patron saint of doctors — we had the first festive gathering of 80 traditional healers in Shakung.  That was the beginning of Dingaka Christian Association and for me the beginning of a new insight into the values of the traditional African religion.

But what are these values?

(1)  Monotheism. The first value which I discovered is that the South African cultures are monotheistic. They worship only one god (modimo). The spirits (badimo) are the souls of deceased human beings who mediate between men and God.

How did the Batswana and Basotho reach this knowledge? Who taught them the idea of a Creator, who knows and provides? Well, I have a theory. Isn’t South Africa really the cradle of humankind? And who kept teaching throughout all the generations past this vision of one God almighty? Exactly, the traditional healers who, together with the chiefs (kings), were in their villages and tribes the guardians of the traditions, and the mediators between the human and the divine.

What a great role these people have played, far from being “witchdoctors”, as we used to call them. Isn’t it time that we officially apologise for having ostracised them for so long and so unjustly?

(2) Together with the value of monotheism, I discovered an endless list of other traditional values which are similar to our Ten Commandments. Respect of God and his name with religious festivities, celebrations, prayers, songs, dances, even silent prayer and meditation. Respect of authority in the society (tribes) and in the families. Respect of life (murders and abortions were severely punished). Respect of other people’s property and goods (stealing was practically unknown). Respect for guests, visitors, strangers. Respect of sex and self-control (sexual abstention was practised). Cooperation for the common good of the community. Fasting from certain food and in certain circumstances, and so on. These are what we may call Christian values which have survived in the traditional villages and families of Botswana and in some rural areas of South Africa.

But the best-kept secret of the traditional African religion is the way traditional doctors heal their sick people. Each one uses his or her own pattern, language, rituals, bones and herbs. But basically the method used is one: dance and trance. With the mesmerism of the drums, clapping of hands and songs, the dancer is brought into a trance. At that point healing is felt directly by the patient or through the medicines provided by the doctor. These more secret rituals may take long nights and days.

Observing the person who reaches trance, one may have the impression of observing somebody who is obsessed or possessed. Perhaps it is that which scares those who call these sessions evil or satanic. But take the time to observe: after being in trance, these people say that they experienced relaxation and healing.

Isn’t that similar to the experience of ecstasy and rapture of our saints, or the transcendental trance of Indians? We know so little of the values behind this ancient form of healing, because nothing has been written down, and so few non-African people have the courage to investigate it.

Why are we so afraid of this healing approach? After all, for centuries, the populations of South Africa had been kept reasonably healthy with the help of these traditional practices.

Paradoxically, from the early 1900s, some African religious leaders (for instance, the Shembe) adopted the traditional methods of healing and mixed it with Christian practices. The result was syncretisms, a characteristic of South Africa, where a multitude of churches mushroomed everywhere started by charismatic leaders.

Shapera in his 1960s book The Bantu Prophets of South Africa names 2,000. The appearance of these churches is Christian; the method they use is dance and trance conjugated with healing.

More recently, the mesmerism is being facilitated by sophisticated electronic orchestras and the preaching is more biblical, or at least the preacher holds a Bible and uses the name of Jesus more often.

The biggest churches in South Africa today use different blends of dances. Exciting music accompanied by the raising and clapping of hands create an emotional charge, and have the assembly ready to be touched by the prophet and so fall into trance, usually by falling down for a few minutes.

But these churches also know how to empty the pockets of their traumatised members. Honest traditional healers are poor. They do not take advantage of their profession. They take what is given to them.

Should we, as the Church, not consider seriously the possibility of calling together our few good, genuine Catholic traditional doctors and confer on them officially the ministry of healing (which they already have) and allow them to exercise this ministry in their traditional way?

We should thank our traditional healers who for at least a millennium before the missionaries came to Africa exercised their ministry of healing as a vocation from God, with enormous sacrifices in their training and in their selfless work. After all, didn’t they exercise the role of healers and catechists of our people?

South Africans should dance for joy because they possess one of the best cultures of the world: the only monotheistic traditional culture of humanity. Let the whole world hear it: Modimo and Nkulunkulu is one and there is no other.

Fr Lino Vinco has been a Stigmatine priest and missionary for 42 years. He is based at Mmakau in the archdiocese of Pretoria.