Biology Reference
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accurately and regularly, their integrity was upheld. They were also the story tellers and
repository of clan memory, and the person others turned to because of their supernatural skills
to heal the sick. The placebo effect (a person believes a pill will cure them even when it has
no effect) was probably a big factor in maintaining the belief in their supernatural power. This
was probably not in the specialized sense of the pastoralist “witchdoctors” called sangomas
[sorcerers] and inyangas [herbalists or traditional healers]. [Witch doctor has taken on a
somewhat derogatory tone, however, in England a witchdoctor was somebody who
specialized in keeping away witches]. Among the Swazis the interesting term, which means
witchdoctor treatment, is called “lawyer-ola”! While the Bushmen would have nightly dances
and trances, among the pastoralist in the lengthening shadows of Kamhlabane this was not as
common. However, when a new sangomas or inyanga was inducted by his or her fellow
“traditional healers,” it was a very big occasion involving dancing, consulting of ancestral
spirits and throwing of bones and sacrificing of goats. The sangoma, usually a woman, would
throw the bones and stones, but the ancestral spirits would direct how they fell and the
sangomas would then interpret this. Hyena bones, and during the Zulu era, tame spotted hyenas,
were part of the sangomas mystique. Indeed, in the fever and fig tree forests of Zululand
sangomas were said to keep tame hyenas that were “emissaries” to the local population.
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