Sangomas keep abreast of digital trends

As Heritage Month draws to an end, exploring the importance of African spirituality and uncovering how it can provide guidance remains important.

The  world has become more modernised over the years, with many traditional healers moving with the times and embracing technology.

Reluctant to start her YouTube channel, Honey Makwakwa, whose ancestral name is Makhosi Nomabutho, soon changed her mind after a spiritual intervention orchestrated by her ancestors.

“They want me to have a YouTube channel? OK ... what am I going to do on this channel? I didn’t want to do the YouTube channel and then I was kidnapped. They only took my phone and that’s when I knew I definitely had to do it.”

Through her channel, Sangoma Society, Makwakwa engages in conversations about cultural themes. However, what belongs to the elders remains sacred. “What is intimate and of the ancestors is not discussed on YouTube or social media. Showing those things openly to people would be disrespectful to the ancestors,” she says.

Frustrated by people who would use her content as their own, Mpho wa Badimo, whose ancestral name is Gogo Nkom’yahlaba, was driven to YouTube where her message would be given a face and voice.

“Usually I’d write certain things on my Facebook and I found that people would steal that and make it their own. I told my ancestors that I’d like to start a YouTube channel, and that if they agree then they must please light the way.

“Having a YouTube channel and embracing the digital age has also made me realise that spirituality is evolving. I’m able to have a consultation with someone through Zoom. I didn’t think that was possible when I first went to initiation school,” she says.

Openly practising African culture on digital platforms is the first step in demystifying the myths that surround it. Makwakwa believes African spirituality is practised in reverence and not secrecy.

“What people have come to understand is that our traditions should remain a secret. They aren’t so much a secret but rather they’re very sacred. The ancestors are your elders – when you are doing things with uGogo you would respect her space. You wouldn’t necessarily want to bathe your grandmother in front of your friends.

“When we respect things by granting them privacy, we honour them. It does not necessarily mean that the thing is a dirty secret that you don’t want to share with people,” she says.

Makwakwa also believes that practising our ancestral heritage will reconnect us with our culture and our understanding of self.

“When we see certain ceremonies in Asian communities, we don’t recognise them as their ancestral practice. We have been put through this process of colonialisation which is the divorcing from our culture and our understandings of self. We don’t recognise  that we are the only people that don’t practise our own ancestral practices whereas everybody around us does.”

Mpho wa Badimo also believes that African spirituality is a vital tool on the quest of knowing oneself.

“If you are a tree without any roots, you will fall any time. African spirituality encourages us to embrace ourselves, our traditions and who we are. Otherwise, we’ll be gullible. We need to know our roots and water them.

“African spirituality  is the compass to our life and the direction we need to take as Africans. We are so lost as a people but we can rely on African spirituality to redirect us and take us back to the essence of our being,” she says.