Harare, Zimbabwe – Gogo Mafilakleva is livestreaming on TikTok wearing a stylish black leather jacket and red blouse, with her dreadlocks covered by a denim sun hat.
Within the first few minutes of her livestream, about 1,000 people tuned in.
Traditional songs play on the stereo and she wears colorful beads and takes a snuff, ground African tobacco used daily by sangomas, traditional South African healers like her.
“Gogo, we’ve got a problem,” says a guest on the livestream.
In Zimbabwe’s Shona culture, a person receives a spiritual calling from their ancestors to become a healer, and if they accept it, they are appointed a sangoma, with the honorific title “gogo” (grandmother) for women and “sekuru” (grandfather) for men.
“Go go… I’m really forgetful and I have an exam coming up. I need help,” the customer continues.
But as he streams from the living room of his home in the UK, he is waiting for the spirit of his late great-grandfather to visit and speak to him.
“Let’s wait until he gets here and we’ll deal with it when he gets here,” she said.
According to traditional beliefs, sangomas play a vital role as intermediaries between the spiritual and material worlds.
It is commonly believed that connecting with ancestors allows spirits or gods to take control and be able to convey messages, diagnose illnesses, perform healing acts, etc. This possession is usually induced by rhythmic drumming, chanting, mbira music and dancing, which helps the healer enter a trance-like state.
Zimbabwe has about 65,000 sangomas and, as in neighbouring countries such as South Africa, traditional healers are often the first point of contact for many people seeking relief for physical and mental ailments.
But now a new generation of sangomas like 37-year-old Mafilakleba are using social media, particularly the popular Chinese app TikTok, to interact with and offer advice to clients.
“I just recently started on TikTok. I got on and realised it was a good experience. I’ve been able to meet a lot of people through that experience,” she told Al Jazeera.
“I will save you.”
Thirty minutes into the livestream, Mafilakleva let out a loud burp, a spiritual sign that he would soon connect with his ancestors, and neatly folded the red and white cloth synonymous with a sangoma and draped it over his shoulders.
Nearly an hour later, the crowd had grown to 8,000.
At 11pm sharp, she bows her head in complete silence for a few minutes, almost in a trance, to connect with her ancestors, while the message board buzzes with activity.
Mafilakleva’s husband, also a healer, appears on screen and welcomes the spirit of her great-grandfather by clapping his hands, in accordance with traditional African customs.
A guest on a livestream raised mental health issues with Mafilakleva, to which she responded immediately.
“I see white smoke rising. It is preventing anything good from happening in your life,” she tells the user reassuringly. “The evil one will not win. Find me some sand from the river and I will help you stop the trouble. Take some snuff as well, and I will save you, my daughter.”
Traditional healing has been part of South African culture for centuries. Typically, a sangoma has a hut or special room where he or she cares for clients who pay a consultation fee and additional services. Clients visit a sangoma for spiritual guidance or special prayers for a variety of problems.
According to belief, sangomas connect with their ancestors and sometimes with mermaid spirits who help them in their work. A male mermaid spirit named David connects with Mafilakureva later in the livestream. Some healers throw hakata (bones) for divination, while others prescribe herbs or snuff depending on the client’s problem. In face-to-face consultations, healers receive cash but in the olden days they received tokens such as chickens, corn or goats.
Now, as some in this traditionally conservative community are going digital, they too are changing the way they work.
Several sangomas are now conducting live consultations, healing sessions and cleansing rituals on TikTok and Facebook for audiences around the world.
On TikTok, they also offer cash-eligible gifts, virtual one-on-one sessions over Zoom and WhatsApp, and payments via Paypal, Western Union, and MoneyGram, while continuing to provide in-person consultations in their local areas.
For Mafilakleva, a sangoma since he was 24, consulting spirits and offering advice on social media was initially anathema, as he felt that technology and African spirituality were not really compatible.
“My husband was the one who initially got involved and encouraged me, but I wasn’t immediately on board,” she says.
She has since come to appreciate TikTok more, and says it now makes it easier for her to connect with people she wouldn’t normally be able to meet in person. The platform has also helped her connect with new customers in the real world.
Expensive consultation fees
Mafilakleva is not the only Zimbabwean healer on TikTok.
Gogo Chihela, a healer from Harare, is one sangoma who has used social media.
“Vazkuru [my grandchildren]”Devils are evil spirits that make your husband or lover leave you. Today I want to help anyone who wakes up one morning to find that the person they thought was in love has dumped them without warning,” Chihera declares in a TikTok video.
Others, such as Sekuru Kanengo and Sekuru Tasuvu, have achieved minor celebrity status on social media for practising witchcraft and solving complex problems through videos.
Kanengo is a big star on TikTok, with 104 million posts and 154 million views, and 30,000 followers on Facebook. He charges a hefty fee for his consulting work.
“Hello Bazukuru, how are you? Sekuru Kanengo’s consultation fee is $200 locally and $300 overseas,” he said in an automated message on his WhatsApp account.
A face-to-face consultation with a typical sangoma in Zimbabwe typically costs around $10.
His main rival, Tasvu, a TikTok and Facebook star with thousands of followers, also charges exorbitant fees for consulting.
In his WhatsApp catalogue, he charges $80 for what he calls “clean money” that doesn’t require customers to “shed blood” to secure a deal.
Traditional healing is widely accepted in the community, but there is sometimes distrust of shadier healers, who fear they may secretly trick desperate patients into doing things that bring misfortune.
Tasvu also offers gambling solutions for those who want to place and win money on sports betting.
This year he threw a lavish $30,000 wedding reception in Harare, where “residents looked on in awe as a procession of luxury cars made their way to the venue”, reported local newspaper the Sunday Mail.
“Oil and water”
Despite their popularity, critics say social media sangomas are profiteers driven by greed and money.
” [legitimate] “A sangoma using a ring light,” wrote a Facebook user named Tendai Zenda Jinyama in response to a post discussing sangomas and technology. “At the time of ‘Mathare’ [spiritual sessions]That means you’re not even allowed to wear shoes or shiny things there.”
But another commenter on the Facebook post, Pride Sirichena, defended the sangoma, saying he was simply “moving with the times”.
Prince Mutandi, spokesman for the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (Zinasa), accused TikTok sangomas of being greedy fakes out to make money.
“Most of the sangomas on TikTok and social media are thieves masquerading as traditional healers,” Mutandi told Al Jazeera.
Mutandi said that like doctors, Zinasa members were bound by a “strict code of ethics” that prohibited them from advertising in mainstream or social media.
He said “most of them” are not national members of the association. In his view, “spirituality and technology” are like “oil and water.”
For Harare-based economic and social commentator Rashwit Mukundu, sangomas’ switch to social media was a “technological revolution in African society”.
“Technology allows people to easily access services that they would normally have to travel far to access and also enables anonymity, such as paying for services using digital, online and mobile means,” Mukundu told Al Jazeera.
“In essence, traditional African medicine and theological issues are being digitized, which speaks to the future of society in terms of the intersection of tradition, culture and technology.”
Zimbabwe is in the midst of an economic crisis marked by hyperinflation, rising unemployment and a huge shortage of foreign currency, which could be driving people to become sangomas.
Mukundu said the economic challenges facing Zimbabwe “often lead to social challenges” that “drive people to seek alternatives, including guidance from ancestral spirits,” and called for strengthening its culture in the field of technology.
But he also warned: “Of course, some sangomas are con artists who try to exploit people’s desperation to make a quick buck.”
