South Africa: Witch Doctors Join in AIDS Fight

Workers at the Living Hope Community Center, a Baptist-affiliated treatment center in Fish Hoek, South Africa, designed an eight-week course for 15 witch doctors, or "sangomas," to spread the gospel and AIDS awareness throughout the Cape peninsula. In the shantytown community of Masiphumelele, officials estimate a quarter of the residents have HIV/AIDS, higher than the national average of 19 percent. Living Hope opened in 1999 as a community outreach project in response to the mounting epidemic. Gradually, it won acceptance from elders and the interest of the sangomas.

The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 80 percent of black South Africans consult sangomas, making them important allies of community HIV/AIDS organizations. The sangomas warily agreed to study the Gospel of John twice a week before receiving lessons in human anatomy, the signs of AIDS, and the function of antiretrovirals and other modern medicines.

Anne Mackellar, public relations officer for Living Hope, hopes the training and education will help alleviate suffering and the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. She emphasized that the program's other object is conversion, which has drawn controversy.

Living Hope is funded heavily by South African and U.S. taxpayers; nearly half its money comes from President Bush's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief. Nathan Geffen, spokesperson for South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign, applauded the educational efforts but not the proselytizing. "To try and offer medical training, but make that knowledge contingent upon changing people's religious views, that I find obnoxious," Geffen said.

Nobuntu Matholeni, a chaplain at the center, brushed aside such criticism. "They came to us knowing very well what we stand for and knowing that this is God's thing," Matholeni said.

Living Hope has no substantive data on the program's success, but points to signs such as expanding involvement within the community structure of Masiphumelele, the conversion of a prominent sangoma to Christianity, and increased attendance at AIDS awareness courses.

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