‘Instant’ healers tarnish sacredness of ubungoma

Plagiarism in the healing and ubuNgoma space is troubling to me. Yes, izangoma and other healers will copy and replicate processes and products owned or coined by other healers.

Before I am misunderstood, there are commonalities in the way we practice and heal. I am making reference here to somewhat commonly held cultural knowledge on the healing properties of salts and medicinal herbs.

There are some more common concoctions/tinctures for specific ailments that we are taught during initiation as amathwasa (initiates). We often replicate remedies when we have clients and patients that need that sort of help.

I am not saying don’t use those remedies because it is plagiarism. My concern is when we steal ideas and intellectual property from each another as healers.

Earlier, I had a conversation with Asande, my bestie. She relayed the story of another friend who is a yoga teacher, life coach and spiritual teacher. This friend is frustrated with a client who reached out under the guise of needing spiritual help only to copy her teachings and course content and passing it off as their own.

The worst part is that the client didn’t even participate fully in the course. As a result, she has little to no understanding of the spiritual bearings of some of the practices. Instead, she is instructing others to do as she did.

I won’t lie, this had me fuming. Imagine stealing a healing method from someone who went out of their way to acquire this knowledge. They were initiated, went through rites of passage and some random person decides that “hmm... this is cool I guess I’ll teach it too”.

Asande and I went into the rabbit hole on the intersection of healing, plagiarism and what that does to the integrity and legitimacy of spiritual/tradition/faith-based healing.

I yelled: “That’s like if I attend two weeks of initiation school, fail to complete it, all the while marketing myself as a trained healer who can facilitate the training of others.”

I was livid. I instantly remembered interacting with a Gobela (shaman) who was a self-initiate but now has amathwasa.

This person said their ancestors did not need them to attend initiation school, but to rather explore their spirituality until they can see what works for them. They told me that they are free to wear any beads of any colour and do their own work. This person said they do not have a Gobela because their ancestors do not submit to the teachings of others.

I was dumbfounded and I thought to myself: “You know this spiritual space is vast and maybe I am lacking in my knowledge.” I really didn’t want to act as though I was superior because I attended initiation school. I asked how they navigate having a group of initiates because there are very specific processes that must be observed in initiation daily.

Their response was “through watching what other sangomas do on social media”.

This person is essentially plagiarising processes they do not know the relevance and significance of. They  slaughter goats and teach people based on knowledge systems they didn’t participate in as students.

What is scarier is the desperation fuelled initiates that will seek help and get duped into thinking that they will be izangoma at the end of their ‘initiation’ by an initiator who was never initiated. 

Surely this is corruption. These shady happenings threaten the overall integrity of spiritual practitioners and their practices. The commonly held belief will be that traditional courses of action are ineffective whereas people are plagiarising and teaching concepts and practices they aren’t qualified for.

We don’t need this.