Healer wants to cure prostitutes and the mentally ill

A 52-year-old traditional healer has a vision to heal all the mentally disabled persons who roam the towns' streets and render all Dzithangani's sex workers marriageable candidates. Not everyone, however, agrees that mental sicknesses can be healed with traditional medicines and spiritual powers.

All that maine Vho-Thikhathali “Skhathi” Nndwambi asks for, is that the municipality assist him and give him permission to continue with his work. “If the municipality or government can find a house and collect all mentally ill persons in that house, I will happily come and heal all those people, at no cost,” maine Vho-Nndwambi said.

Vho-Nndwambi, a resident of Madombidzha village, said his heart was broken one busy afternoon when a mentally ill person was nearly knocked down by a car. “He just sauntered across the street, without any care about speeding cars,” he said. “Two speeding cars nearly hit him, and his disturbance almost caused an accident which would have included three more cars. I felt pity for him and all other persons who suffer like him.”

He then decided to use his spiritual powers and healing knowledge, which span more than 46 years, to heal all the mentally ill persons who live as hobos in Louis Trichardt. “I have potent medicines and spiritual powers,” he said, empathy written on his face. “All those people who sniff glue and attack people are not doing so for fun; they are possessed by evil spirits who control them.”

He added that some of the mentally ill persons had been living on the streets for about 30 years. “Their families need them, but they are violent and uncontrollable,” he said.

Vho-Nndwambi claims that he has powers to turn all prostitutes who sell their bodies at Dzithangani into marriageable women. “The municipality should just gather them into one house and see if I cannot help solve the problem of prostitution in our town. Do you think that the families of prostitutes are happy wherever they are, knowing that their daughter or daughters are selling their bodies?”

He continued to speak patiently and passionately about his vision, spiritual powers, and potent medicines. “I started practising traditional African healing at the age of six, and I was formally initiated as a traditional healer when I turned nine years old,” he explained. “I have experience.”

He claimed to have visited the Makhado Municipality in August last year. Unfortunately, he did not know whom to approach or how to address his vision to assist within the municipality.

Makhado Municipality's spokesperson, Mr Louis Bobodi, said that Vho-Nndwambi had to apply to the council as the council had a land-use policy.

The Department of Health's spokesperson, Mr Macks Lesufi, said Vho-Nndwambi must link up with health co-ordinators in the district and see how best they could work together.

“Some patients are dangerous and our health centres know how to treat and bring them under control,” he said. “We are in no position to bring patients into one house for him to treat them. Mental health is a complicated field – and as such, we have an act which governs us.”

Date:27 February 2015

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

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