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Chapter 12 Women, who constitute a significant segment of the group of traditional healers in Swaziland, are increasingly exposed to the economic and social forces of the global system.Because of the combination of global, national, and local influences, traditional healers are no longer able to perform in accordance with classic roles, nor do they maintain their historic gender relationships. This analysis showshow female and more recently male healers in this small southern African country are adjusting their patterns and practices to conform to the socioeconomic imperatives that connect them to the modern world.* Classic Swazi Healing Roles and the Relevance of Gender An understanding of classicalhealing roles isessential to understanding the evolution of traditional medical practice. Gender specificity was central to the profession,with male and female practitioners performing different but cooperative functions. There was a discrete division of labor between the diviner (sangoma) and the herbalist (inyanga).1 In the gender-specific professional categories, diviners (tangoma)2 were usually women, while the herbalists (tinyanga) were generally men.Although typically, as within all stratified and patrilineal societies,women had little power in their communities , divining wasan activity wherebywomen could exercise dominance.3 It was the task of the female healers—that is, the diviners—to assess the causes of illness by reading the bones (kushaya ematsambo) or, when a more comprehensive diagnosis wasrequired, by conducting thefemba ceremony.4 Then they referred the patient to the male healer (the herbalist) judged best able to treat the condition. Because the herbalist usually did not diagnose or divine, in most cases the inyanga wasdependent upon the recom- *These data were collected in the 1980s before the lifting of apartheid and the economic shifts in southern Africa. Swazi Traditional Healers, Role Transformation, and Gender Enid Gort mendation of the diviner. To account for the predominance of women as diviners, an elderly sangoma informant explained: There are many more female langoma than males simply because one is entered by male spirits (emanzawe) of those who were killed in the war between the Swazi and the Tonga. In that war, the men who died were Thonga warriors. Since they died before marriage, their spirits enter into Swazi females because they are seeking wives. By providing for them (i.e., by becoming a sangoma) you are making them into Swazi spirits and that's whythey help patients through you.5 Social scientists have their own explanations for the preponderance of women among tangoma and their paucityamong tinyanga. Kuper (1986:6667 ) points out that such differences mayhave resulted from the constraints against women roaming around the countryside to gather medicinal plants, though no such constraints prevented them from divining within the confines of their own homesteads. Lee (1964) has provided a psychosocial explanation to account for the overwhelmingly female practitioners in the sangoma category: "The relativelyhealthy, active and intelligent woman may indeed gain authority and prestige from the process [of becoming a sangoma ] and may be able to enact a more 'male' role [since] all formal authority and religiousobservance [have been] entirely the prerogative of... men" (149). Green (1989) agrees that as a result of "status problems and role conflicts, certain women are more often called to become sangoma." He suggests, however, that the most likely candidates are those who have experienced "infertility, . . . loss of children, . . . divorce or separation, . . . and domestic disharmony caused by conflicts between cowivesor between husband and wife" (188). In spite of the preponderance of women, there was always a small number of male diviners.According to Hammond-Tooke (1962), "they are almost certainly of homosexual bent . . . often manifesting gross psychopathology " (246). Male tangoma are also perceived by the Swazi as being effeminate. The same informant who accounted for the predominance of female tangoma explained, "Long ago there were many more female tangoma . The male tangoma were like females because female spirits possessed them. If you have a male spirit, you can behave like a man; if you have a female spirit,you behave like a woman." The means bywhich male and female healers in the two categories were selected to train differed greatly. The intensity, if not the amount of time required, differed, too. Traditionally, diviners (tangoma) did not choose their calling or their instructors (bogobela). Rather, the ancestors (emadloti) and/or the spirits of vanquished enemies (emanzawe) coerced them into the activity by inflicting long-lasting and mysterious illnesses that could not be cured until the sufferer agreed to be "inducted into the profession" (kutwasa ). The trainer, always a sangoma identified through...

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