Public warned against bogus healers
ALEXANDRA - Traditional healer tells the truth about offering miracle cures.
A traditional healer, Sydney Mathebula, has warned against the exploitative practice of scammers masquerading as healers, saying they tarnished the image of genuine healers.
Mathebula, chairperson of the Regional Traditional and Faith Healers Forum was commenting on the many posters on street poles, and pamphlets and flyers distributed at road intersections advertising bizarre healing services beyond the capacity of humans.
These adverts claim to offer love charms and potions, to alter private body parts to attract lovers and enhance sexual pleasure, recover lost lovers, dispell bad luck, get clients jobs and make them rich, win the lottery, and protection from enemies. He said the adverts were from fake healers in it for money.
“Genuine traditional healers’ practice is a spiritual calling not to be advertised and those who seek the healers’ help are directed to them by their own ancestral spirits and guidance,” explained Mathebula.
He added that traditional healers could be thanked for their services in whatever way by the client, and not for profit. “Those who charge, and exorbitantly so, are bogus who, in any case, should themselves be rich if they claim to have powers to enrich others.”
Mathebula said the fake healers’ victims were mostly those with serious problems and gullible to all sorts of bad advice. “Genuine traditional healers operate in privacy and qualify to be healers after rigorous training by mentors as directed by their ancestors. They should prove to clients their qualification through certificates issued by the mentor, the forum and an additional accredited certificate expected soon from government.”
He added that most of the fake healers rented rooms but soon disappeared after swindling clients out of money and personal belongings.
Genuine healers, he said, were integrated into the community, participated in community events and attended training programmes to improve their services. Their expertise was sought after by all race groups and tourists, and by some pharmaceutical companies wanting to know the properties of their medicines.
He was, however, sceptical of some companies that were said to exploit the healers’ knowledge of herbal medicine for selfish profit motives.
“Sometimes they [companies] buy land on which traditional healers get their herbs and plants to close off their source of medicines,” he said.
He urged the government to help the healers to patent or issue them intellectual property rights for their medicines to avoid exploitation.
