Three reasons Ntsiki Mazwai says sangomas must be held accountable

Poet and activist Ntsiki Mazwai blew off steam on Twitter about a sangoma who was a stripper. 

The poet told TshisaLIVE traditional healing bodies needed to regulate sangomas.

Ntsiki, who usually finds herself at the centre of controversies said other races approached their spirituality with reverence. 

Here are some of the hard-hitting points she's made to support her argument.

When you respect something you go at it with a certain decorum.

“All the other races and nations, when it comes to their spiritual masters and leaders, there is a great reverence to their work and almost a stillness around their spirituality and it's sacred.”

There is a sacred way that spirituality is approached

“This thing where we disregard the elders is a problem because then as the youth we start making up our own rules, and when you make up your own rules that's when you are going to mess up with spirits and then we all know that messing with spirits can go horribly wrong.”

African elders' and traditional healers' bodies need to come together

She said the intervention of African elders was needed to mend the broken communication between the generations that would help remedy the theme of African spirituality.  

Traditional healer, cultural and spiritual consultant Gatyeni Mamali weighed in on sangomas becoming celebrities through reality shows.

“It is completely disrespectful we are made a laughing stock, and they have no disregard for scared things. These reality shows, about 90% of them I don't even watch them any more ...  they are making a mockery out of our calling, out of ubungoma, out of our culture.”

He said most of them are about the bottom line.

“It's sensationalism in the greater scale and it is sensationalism for TV ratings. And I always say to people: producers, they don't care about credibility, as long as something can push the numbers up. That's what matters. They don't care about the credibility of the people in these reality shows of the content being produced and it's misleading people.

“I remember watching one of the reality shows and I was gobsmacked to hear somebody saying amadlozi is an insect.  Amadlozi can never be an insect, an insect represents isichitho its something associated with debt. Amadlozi can never come in a form of an insect, they come in a form of bees, in a form of a horse in the form of cows, and so on But in that reality show, there was nobody who could check in that.”

“The reality shows are making a mockery of ubungoma and misleading people along the way. There's nobody who is fact checking those things ... the shows that have been produced in recent times about ubungoma they are misleading a lot of people, and to some extent they are fictional,” said the traditional healer.

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