The boundaries between tradition and modernity are blurring as people who were often vilified and silenced are gaining voices and exposure. Dr.Kolisa Yola Sinyanya is a testament to this paradigm shift. The richness of the human experience and convergence of seemingly disparate worlds.
Sangomas are legally recognized in South Africa as “traditional health practitioners”, under the Traditional Health Practitioners Act of 2004 of South Africa, but that doesn’t mean that damage that colonial mentalities had on African expressions and identities doesn’t affect this calling.n The irony is that when the settlers (their doctors included) arrived in South Africa in the 17th century, they worked together heavily with traditional healers to get medicine and stay healthy. As then years went on the colonial government gave more funding and support to the Western/colonial government promoting the ideology that the colonial healthcare services were based on rationality and research while the African sangomas were primitive and inferior. The missionaries that had initially worked together with the sangomas when they first arrived in the 1800s began to preach that what the sangomas did was demonic and they were workers of Satan. Those colonial stigmas still follow sangomas to this day and they are often viewed as charlatans who take advantage of people’s lack of education. But Sinyanya, who is an internationally respected scientist, breaks that stigma.
Sinyanya, 39, was born into a well-to-do Christian family in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. Her parents instilled the belief that she could do whatever she put her mind to and that it was important for her to work smart and not hard towards her goals. Her parents wanted their daughter to grow up to be independent and have a good education.
Academic validation would eventually lead her to graduate with a doctorate in ocean biogeochemistry. The first woman in Africa to attain that degree. But teaching Sinyanya to be very independent and free-thinking would have an effect on Sinyanya that her parents wouldn’t predict. Sinyanya’s calling came to her in a unique way. In many African cultures (including Sinyanya’s Xhosa culture) a sign that one has the calling is bad luck. Sinyanya didn’t go through bad luck but noticed that people around her started to fear her and tell her she was wearing things that she couldn’t see. She ended up consulting with other spirit mediums to figure out what was happening. In the process they revealed to her that she had a calling. When one has a calling, one needs to go through the process of initiation where they’ll receive the ability to commune with ancestors and be taught the basics of being a traditional healer for the bad luck to end. The process is known as ukuthwasa. The aspect of traditional healers that often rubs western scientists that due to traditional healers often relying on communing with spirits, but many western scientists, Nikola Tesla, in particular, admitted that there might be an aspect of science and information that won’t get tapped into until the spiritual is also studied. After the ukuthwasa, the initiate takes on their role as not just a healer, but a mediator and counselor to the community.
Regardless of how supportive her parents had been, it was difficult for the mother (father having passed on) found it difficult to accept her daughter’s calling (ithongo) coming from a Christian religious belief system which led to a rift in their relationship. Sinyanya didn’t let that discourage her and continued to pursue both her studies and her calling.
“It hasn’t been easy,” Sinyanya explains, “People react to me according to their background and belief systems. Sometimes people discriminate against me outright and sometimes in more subtle ways by saying things along the lines of “how can you be a sangoma? You’re educated!” or “You’re too young and modern to be a sangoma!”
It is unbelievable for many to think that Sinyanya, who has garnered international attention as a woman in STEM, is a sangoma. She has been featured as a superhero comic figure named Nitro in a comic called Super Scientists meant to get more South African youth into science through comics. She’s been profiled by CNN, the Mail and Guardian and BBC. Her accolades go on having won But she also wishes to gain the same respect and recognition as a sangoma.
Sinyanya hosts consultations at her home in Mowbray, Cape Town. Being highly-educated and easy to approach has allowed many of her clients who previously were too reserved or shy to seek traditional help to trust in the services she gives. A fellow medium, Prince January, claims that traditional spiritualism has allowed them to come together and commune with each other exploring African spirituality as a community rather than as an individual. The interesting aspect of that is that January is Shona, a culture quite far from Sinyanya, but African spirituality is also the promotion of ubuntu, togetherness. “If more people embraced their traditional roots a lot of the issues we have with tribalism, xenophobia and such might be alleviated,” January explains.
Sinyanya is currently running two businesses, Ulwazi Scientific Communications and STEM Research and M’Afrika By Kolisa ( a fashion brand). Her prominence has a sangoma may not have reached the same level as her science career, but she has definitely opened the doors for Africans to realize that they can balance traditional African beliefs and a modern life.
