WAGANGA AND SANGOMA-FAKE TRADITIONAL HEALERS

The word 'mganga' will, with no doubt, ring bells in any Kenyan or Tanzanian and to an extent, Ugandan. Yes, it means a traditional healer or traditional doctor, if you want to make it sound more decent in your ears. 'Sangoma' means the same in South Africa. Well, these 'Waganga' and 'Sangoma' are in our societies, more so in the African setting and the Latin America. The use of traditional medicine has been in practice way back then and it is on-going mostly in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Traditional herbs are the cornerstone to the modern form of medicine (tablets, sirup, ointments etc). However, some dishonest individuals misuse them to benefit themselves by deceiving, well, ignorant and at times desperate people. There are more con artists in our streets, towns and cities who claim to be traditional healers than those with the real ability to do so. Who are these people, how and why do they do this? Let’s find out.
The conmen who hide under the umbrella of traditional healers are just ordinary people but in most cases they are foreigners in the places of practice. This is very evident in the streets of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Cape Town to list but a few. A walk in Nairobi and Dar will confirm this. There are very many posters pinned on the electric poles, stickers on walls of buildings in the busy streets of the cities despite the "NO POSTERS ALLOWED" warning on the walls. "MGANGA KUTOKA ZANZIBAR","DOKTA BINGWA WA TANGA TANZANIA","DR. OKWOFWE FROM NIGERIA" are popular types of posters in Nairobi streets citing healers from outside Kenya. Just across the border, in Dar one will be very surprised to find equally the same or more posters but none cites the healers to hail from Dar! Most posters will read: Nigeria, Mozambique, Malawi and towns in Tanzania which are far away from the capital. In South Africa, the conmen turn traditional healers come from East Africa, more so Uganda, and Nigeria.

The fact that these dishonest traditional healers are foreigners in most places they conduct their business, gives them an edge over the local ones. People who visit them for 'healing' tend to believe they are better than the ordinary healers among them. Well, a prophet is not accepted in his home town, huh? Africans and Latin Americans (majority) are thought or rather perceived to be superstitious and believe so much in ancestral spirits, black magic etc.  Some people believe in curses by their long dead parents/grandparents to be the barrier of them not getting good jobs or having bad luck in whatever they place their hands on. Hence, the help of traditional healers is sought to appease the spirits and thus uplift the barriers! Absurd requirements are often needed to appease the spirits. One may be asked to bring a spotless white cock, elephant's waste, black piece of cloth, armpit hair of a wife or husband and many more. Well, most are impossible to get in the fixed duration given may be of 3 days. "If you cannot get, you can give me money and I will get them and mix in the concoction by the time you visit next," such are common statements from the conmen. I highly doubt if any cent is spent on any of them.
Why would one leave their home town or even country for another place to just engage in such a dishonest business? One reason is that, if one is just not trustworthy and is into conning others for his/her income, he/she could not do such business in the place of origin simply because people will notice and shun him/her away. However, majority go to these foreign countries to such for a better living. It is well known that foreigners who do not qualify for white-collar jobs find it harder than those with papers to get jobs. This forces them into such criminal acts of fake traditional healers so as to eke a living in the new land. The marketing is rather easy due to the predecessors and the belief in superstitions among the locals. Large poster with very promising services of healing such as: TO RETURN LOST LOVE, PROMOTION AT WORK, SEXUAL DRIVE INCREMENT, GETTING A JOB IN A WEEK'S TIME, CONTROL OVER A SPOUSE, GETTING RICH EASILY, POLITICAL POWER and very easy-to-recall phone numbers. These kind of things are what greedy, faithless and vision-less people fall for. The promising healing ability on the posters and superstitious beliefs are well taken advantage by the fake traditional healers since people become desperate at such points in life.
Once the desperate lads have fallen into the traps of the con artists, they give out whichever amount of money required by the traditional healers. Others charge consultation fees ranging from $45-$100 and service of up to $2000 depending on the magnitude and urgency of the problem to be fixed. Both the poor and rich are victims of these fake healers. The poor will work hard to look for money to grace the healers in exchange for instant success in life rather than put the money into good investment, whereas the rich will splash their cash to get control over their rivals in business-all these being false belief that people have being dragged into. On the flip side, are the conmen with broad smiles as they have ripped easy money where they did not sow Cases of arrests of these fake conmen have been reported in South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania. In all the cases, rich guys were involved.
It is high time people came out of this darkness of superstitions. There are no elevators in success; one has to take the stairs! If you need a good job, get its qualifications. Dismissals at different places of work does not translate to angry ancestral spirits-you have to re-examine yourself to find out what is up with your personality, work performance etc. Lest we move on from such practices, we will see more posters of these con artists filling up electric poles and people crying of foul play day-in-day-out.
Indeed, it is hard to differentiate who are real traditional healers from those who aren't.