Look At

A Professional Look At Witch Doctors

The experiences and observa tions of Michael Gelfand on native medicine men —or so called witch-doctors—should in terest a great many people in the

South Pacific, although the

author writes specifically of Southern Rhodesian practitioners called nganga .

THE author is now Professor of Medicine at the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, in Salisbury, but previously, from the age of 26 in 1939, was a Govern ment Medical Officer in Southern Rhodesia. He was born in South Africa and Africans have been his friends and his concern all his life.

In his latest book, which he has called for want of a better name in English, Witch Doctor, he has re moved a great deal of the Holly wood hoo-ha about the subject. In the context of the people of Mashonaland, a nganga is not a sorcerer, although one of his functions is to provide protection against witchcraft.

When Gelfand started practising medicine in Southern Rhodesia he found that most of his Shona patients had a little each way—they accepted his treatment but at the same time consulted their own nganga, some even seeking leave of absence from the hospital to do so.

Reassurance He learned the part reassurance and confidence played in the re covery of his native patients and this was supplied by the nganga and not by him. This led to his study of these individuals credited with special healing powers whom he met

on a colleague-to-colleague basis.

They operated, he found, under a strict code of ethics, and to be come one was far more difficult, in his opinion, than to go to university and pass the necessary examinations.

A would-be nganga had, first of all, to get the “call” from a departed spirit who had also been a healer, and from there on his success depended on the treatment he gave.

Apart from his practice, a nganga lives the life of any villager, with the same chores and duties and working his own land. Payment for his medical services, however, gives him a higher standard of living.

Although a nganga has other functions than medicine he rarely becomes a political figure.

A Shona doctor practises pre ventive medicine, has a knowledge of herbal remedies that probably warrants further investigation and rids people of evil spirits.

Although Professor Gelfand writes with insight and understanding of the African way of life that tolerates the existence of ngangas, in the ultimate analysis he feels that witch doctors are a bar to progress as they perpetuate a belief in supernatural cures for human ills and in

superstitution.

There is a foreword by Sir Roy Welensky.—JT. (WITCH DOCTOR. Published by Harvill and distributed by Wm. Collins. 37/3.)