page_title: Traditional healers of Southern Africa
section_title: Thwasa and initiation
hierarchical_section_title: Traditional healers of Southern Africa / Thwasa and initiation
caption_attribution_description: English: Initiate (Thwasa) moves towards the goat that will be sacrificed at her initiation into becoming a Sangoma.
context_page_description: Traditional healers of Southern Africa are practitioners of traditional African medicine in Southern Africa. They fulfill different social and political roles in the community, including divination, healing physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses, directing birth or death rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witchcraft, and narrating the history, cosmology, and myths of their tradition. There are two main types of traditional healers within the Nguni, Sotho-Tswana, and Tsonga societies of Southern Africa: the diviner, and the herbalist. These healers are effectively South African shamans who are highly revered and respected in a society where illness is thought to be caused by witchcraft, pollution or through neglect of the ancestors. It is estimated that there are as many as 200,000 indigenous traditional healers in South Africa compared to 25,000 Western-trained doctors. Traditional healers are consulted by approximately 60% of the South African population, usually in conjunction with modern biomedical services.
context_section_description: Both men and women can become traditional healers. A sangoma is believed to be "called" to heal through an initiation illness; symptoms involve psychosis, headaches, intractable stomach pain, shoulder, neck complaints, short breath, swollen feet and waist issues or illness that cannot be cured by conventional methods. These problems together must be seen by a sangoma as thwasa or the calling of the ancestors. Sangomas believe that failure to respond to the calling will result in further illness until the person concedes and goes to be trained.  The word thwasa is derived from thwasa which means 'the light of the new moon' or from ku mu thwasisa meaning 'to led to the light'.
  A trainee sangoma (or ithwasane) trains formally under another sangoma for a period of anywhere between a number of months and many years. The training involves learning humility to the ancestors, purification through steaming, washing in the blood of sacrificed animals, and the use of muti, medicines with spiritual significance.  The ithwasa may not see their families during training and must abstain from sexual contact and often live under harsh and strict conditions. This is part of the cleansing process to prepare the healer for a life's work of dedication to healing and the intense experiences of training tend to earn a deeply entrenched place in the sangoma's memory.
  During the training period the ithwasa will share their ailments in the form of song and dance, a process that is nurtured by the analysis of dreams, anxieties, and with prayer.  The story develops into a song which becomes a large part of the graduation-type ceremony that marks the end of the ukuthwasa training.  At times in the training, and for the graduation, a ritual sacrifice of an animal is performed (usually chickens and a goat or a cow).
  At the end of ukuthwasa and during initiation, early hours of the morning a goat that will be slaughtered should be a female one, that's for Umguni, the second one will be slaughtered the following morning after the chickens, which are sacrificed at the river Abamdzawo. All this sacrifices are to call to the ancestors and appease them. The local community, friends and family are all invited to the initiation to witness and celebrate the completion of training. The ithwasane is also tested by the local elder sangomas to determine whether they have the skills and insight necessary to heal.  The climactic initiation test is to ensure the ithwasa has the ability to "see" things hidden from view.  This is signified and proved when other sangomas hide the ithwasa's sacred objects, including the gall bladder of the goat that was sacrificed and the thwasane must, in front of the community, call upon their ancestors, find the hidden objects, which includes the skin of the goat, Umgamase, the ancestors clothes and return them back to the sangomas that hid them, thus proving they have the ability to "see" beyond the physical world. The heading practice is also done at night after taking off all those traditional clothing you had worn all day, they hide them for that thwasane to look for them again. The graduation ceremony takes 3 days from Friday till Sunday, the early hours of the morning the thwasane needs to sweep the whole yard, wash his/her clothes and also to bath at the river, he/she should return home when they are dry.
caption: An initiate (ithwasa) being led towards the goat that will be sacrificed at her initiation into becoming a sangoma.
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