From Jacobsdal With Spirit: My Journey as a Healer-Scholar

Jacobsdal may be a small town on the Free State map, but it is here, in this roll, that I find both my grounding and my voice. For many, Jacobsdal is just farmland and history; for me, it is soil that remembers, soil that speaks. This is where my work as a Traditional Health Practitioner (THP-SA) and autodidact scholar unfolds - not in silence, but in conversation with my ancestors, my community, and the land itself. 

Carrying My Calling

When I accepted my calling, I also accepted the weight of misconception. Too often, traditional healers are boxed into stereotypes - whispered about as dangerous, dismissed as unscientific, or romanticized without depth. I knew early on that I could not allow myself to be trapped in those false images.

For me, being a ngaka ya setso is not about fear, secrecy, or shame. It is about service. It is about standing between the living and the ancestors, listening, interpreting, healing, and guiding. It is about restoring dignity to a people whose wisdom was systemically attacked and stripped away by colonialism and apartheid. My calling is not a burden. It is a sacred responsibility.

Scholarship Without Permission

My qualifications - B. THSc. (Hons), M. THSc., D. THSc. (Autodidact) - are not just letters after my name. They are a declaration. They say: "African wisdom is knowledge. African experience is scholarship. African healing is science."

I did not wait for permission of foreign faculties or colonial gatekeepers to tell me what I carry is valid. I walked the hard road of autodidact scholarship - self-driven, disciplined, grounded in lived practice and guided by relentless study. I am proof that African medicine can live both in the indumba and in scholarship.

To intellectualise our healing traditions is not to distort them. It is to affirm that what our ancestors left us is rigorous, ethical, and worthy of the same recognition afforded to other systems of knowledge. 

Jacobsdal, My Teacher

People often ask why I remain in Jacobsdal when the allure of the city could offer me visibility and networks. My answer is simple: Jacobsdal teaches me.

Here, I sit with elders whose stories are oral libraries. Here, I walk land that remembers battles, rituals, and prayers. Here, I witness the paradox of our society: rural people depend on healers daily, while in law, media, and institutions we are still treated with suspicion.

This town keeps me rooted. It reminds me that I do not need a city skyline to validate my calling. My validation comes from spirit, from soil, from the very people I serve. 

Breaking Misconceptions

I have made it my duty to confront the myths head-on. Traditional healers are not witchdoctors. We are not con-artists. We are leaders, ethicists, counsellors, historians, and spiritual guides. We carry medicine for both body and memory.

Whenever I am asked to speak or write, I carry this message with conviction: that Africa cannot continue to shame its own wisdom while rushing to embrace foreign systems. Our knowledge is not lesser; it is ours. And that alone makes it powerful. 

This is the battle I fight: not for personal recognition, but for the recognition of a knowledge system that refuses to die.

Looking Ahead

My vision is that African medicine must stand without apology. It must be documented, researched, regulated, and respected. But more than that, it must remain sacred, protected from dilution and exploitation.

I believe our healing goes beyond the physical. We must heal our memory, our sense of identity, and the shame we inherited from colonisation. If we restore health but leave our people broken in spirit and history, then we have failed.

From Jacobsdal to Johannesburg, from the Free State to the world, I continue to write, heal, and speak this truth: Africa heals itself - and in that healing lies a gift for humanity.

This piece is part of my ongoing reflections here on AfroSpiritual-Ink, where I write about traditional healing, African knowledge systems, and the intersection of spirit, law, and identity. 


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