In African lore, success is often said to be found in the dank room of the sangoma. If you for example, like Uyapo Ndapi of the Botswana Network of Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA) happen to become a director at a young age, win an international award, get to meet Barrack Obama ÔÇô and all before you even turn 30 ÔÇô then the myth goes that you must have a helping hand from the underworld.
Africa is, doubtless, a land of extremes. Whereas scrupulous professionals like Ndapi succeed on their own merits, through sheer dedication and application of inherent gifts, there are those who seek the dubious, short circuit and find solace in the murky world of diviners and practitioners of the occult.
Whatever their geographical location, diviners are reinventing themselves for the era of hard times. If you happen to find yourself in a dingy room in Metsimotlhabe seeking divination from the local ngaka, you will notice that there’s one commodity on sale amid the cast bones and witchdoctor’s odds and ends that perfectly reflects the preoccupation of the times.
For P100 perhaps, the diviner will sell you some peace of mind by the half hour, or the hour for a higher fee, depending on your state of desperation.
“I was in a state of anxiety,” says a regular client, a local business man, recalling his first consultation with Dr Onga, one among the rising wave of diviners, sangomas and ngakas who have made a home in locations like Mogoditshane. “And you have to say, Dr Onga offers positive solutions,” adds the client.
This client is among the growing number of upwardly mobile, middle class professionals and business people, and politicians even, who seek out the murky comforts of these diviners. It is all done with utter, practised stealth. The client will furtively glance to the right, then to the left, to make sure he or she is not spotted, and once assured the coast is clear, ducks into the diviner’s room.
These diviners, faith healers, witchdoctors, or whatever name they choose to go by, offer a whole series of remedies for the myriad social and physical ills that plague humanity. From relieving financial stress to combating HIV/AIDS, from solutions for those itching to claw back lost lovers to those who want more potency in the bedroom, they claim to offer it all.
Originally from Uganda and describing himself, among other things, as a clairvoyant , Dr Onga plies his ‘rare gifts’ from a two and a half house in Mogoditshane. If you are hard pressed to know what a clairvoyant is, it is a person who claims to have a supernatural ability to perceive events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact. In African parlance we call them witchdoctors, not so?
But an increasing number seem to revel in reaching out for the more fanciful name ÔÇô clairvoyant.
After all, it does sound eminently more sexy than witchdoctor, or ngaka, sangoma, mganga or whatever name the myriad African tongues derive for those who make it their business to tell you your future and perform the other hocus pocus of this calling.
“People come to me to be uplifted, not to be brought down,” says Dr Onga, in explaining what he does. “I have brought many smiles to many unhappy people.”
Such upliftment is no doubt a seductive proposition in these trying times. As markets have tumbled and great institutions faltered, reeling amid the ripple effects of the global recession, the idea that the future can be predicted ÔÇô and potentially improved by that foresight ÔÇô has appeared increasingly irresistible.
If you want a play at the numbers, consider this from a more advanced society. The British Astrological and Pyschic Society recently reported that demand for psychic readings was rising faster than the country’s national debt.
Local sangoma’s note a surge in first-time clients, many of them women. Some want the diviner to help them corner that elusive man of their dreams. Others want an antidote for the husband with a wandering eye ÔÇô that untamed philanderer who just can’t get it that he needs to keep his zipper up.
Dr Onga explains his clientele used to be about 75 percent female. “Now it’s about 60/40,”he says.
Business men come to them for solutions to their financial problems, politicians seek them out for clout over their rivals, soccer stars are known to seek the muti men for victory in the beautiful game (and what beauty, one wonders therefore, lies in a game that encourages its players to seek this questionable abracadabra).
As Dr Onga so pointedly insists, there are differences between a muti man and a faith healer, between an astrologer and a diviner. But to all intents and purposes, don’t they all practice the occult? So what’s the fuss about differentiation?
As a way of testing out the whole charade, I dared to sit down for a reading with Dr Onga. Here’s what he told me: “You work in an industry that is very fluid” (true) and “you have a tendency to play it safe” (well, uh-uh: I love the occasional, mindless, breathless risk).
To my skeptical mind, it all pans in an utter predictable way. Isn’t avoiding firm predictions one fire-sure way of avoiding being proved wrong? So where’s the novelty? But while Dr Onga’s business client requests anonymity for fear that his colleagues will scoff, he swears that the clairvoyant has been spot on in his prophecies about his financial prospects.
In Eastern cultures, business and political leaders routinely consult horoscopes. Jessica Adams, an Australian psychic astrologer who trained at the London College of Psychic Studies, expresses bafflement that Westerners won’t follow their lead. “We could see this Capricorn cycle coming,” she told TIME magazine. “I could see these household names crumbling,” she says of the bloodbath that hit the housing market and Wall Street.
But this side of the world, we have our “Dr Baba Yusufs” or “Dr Baulenis” or Dr Wazas”, hailing from places as different as Malawi is from Tanzania, as diverse as Uganda is from Nigeria. Just scan any classified section of a local newspaper and the names jump out of the page.
They have a panacea for those men (ahem!) who have small penises, claiming to give a growth of up to 15 to 25 cm. They promise that success is 100 percent guaranteed if you are looking for a job. They promise remedies for barren women, offer solutions to tighten the vagina, and for men, stronger erections.
“Some of these doctors are mere con artists,” insists Kgomoso Ditsang, a student in Gaborone, interviwed at random for this piece. “My appeal to women is to stay away from them because some will initiate you into Satanism.”
And for men who seek a panacea for potency in the bedroom? “My message is wake up, stupid,” says Ditsang. “Who says you need muti to get it up?”
That the newspapers that carry classifieds for these ‘doctors’ range from the Botswana Guardian to South Africa’s Mail & Guardian (‘Africa’s best read’) shows the extent to which the occult, diviners, and sangomas have pervaded society. They have cut a broad swath from those in the upper crust of society to those who are barely getting by.
To use a crude comparison between the two mentioned newspapers and their perceived readership, consider that while the Botswana Guardian will probably be read by a more diverse readership, the Mail & Guardian is more high-brow, capturing a higher proportion of university graduate readers than any other news paper in South Africa. Thus the “Dr Baba Yusufs” are capturing a gaping market.
