Despite being the cornerstone of many African societies, the practitioners are yet to attain legal coverage allowing them to freely attend their training and issue sick notes to patients.
JOHANNESBURG - Traditional health practitioners, or sangomas as they're more commonly known, have decried their lack of representation in the country’s labour laws 14 years after the Traditional Healers Practitioners’ Act was signed into law.
Traditional healers rely on indigenous knowledge and practices to diagnose, prevent and treat physical, spiritual, and mental illnesses.
However, despite being the cornerstone of many African societies, the practitioners are yet to attain legal coverage allowing them to freely attend their training and issue sick notes to patients.
"It was a very weird transition. I don’t wish anybody to go through that thing, but if you have to, you have to," Gogo Kgabo Mphelo said.
Mphelo, who works as a structural draftsman, has been juggling her job with her traditional healing practice for five years now.
She tells Eyewitness News that accepting “the calling” and following through with her training was difficult.
Now a gobela or teacher herself, she said that she had it better than most as her bosses were much more understanding than those of some of her trainees.
"Most of the people, the ones that thwasa, I know half of them stopped working, literally for four months, and they had to look for another job when they finished," Mphelo said.
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