By Emily Mgidi
A sangoma with 22 years of experience has climbed into the celebrity TV sangoma, Gogo Maweni, calling her practices “dangerous”.
The show, Thokoza Gogo, is about the life and practice of Lee-Anne Maweni, better known as Gogo Maweni. It premiered on the Multichoice channel, Moja Love, last month. The show often trends, but it’s mostly through negative tweets.
Now a proper traditional healer, Sangoma Nene, has come out all guns blazing.
Nene, who has been practising for more than two decades in KZN and internationally, is asking the relevant sangoma councils to intervene.
She said her concern comes from video clips she’s watched from Maweni’s reality show.
“In this show, she’s seen teaching her Thwasas [sangoma initiates] about dark magic, how to injure people spiritually, and she’s proud of being capable of doing this,” Nene told Scrolla.Africa.
Nene said it was disturbing for her to watch Maweni being “psychotic, narcissistic, immoral, disgusting, unbelievable and showing a lack of grace that she’s expressing”.
“I’m not here to shame her or ruin her reputation, I’m just really concerned because, at some point, there will be reckoning and it’ll happen to your family,” she said.
But Maweni isn’t bothered. She said responding to Nene would mean she was giving her power over her, and she won’t allow that to happen.
“I will not give her the power and the attention she wants from me; toodles to her,” Maweni told Scrolla.Africa.
She’s advising those who follow Nene – who has a substantial following on social media – to continue doing so as she’s unbothered by her message.
Maweni’s show is currently on a break but will be back soon. She said the plan was to shoot the first six episodes, take a break, and then resume.
Meanwhile, the Traditional Healers Association (THA) has condemned such reality shows.
“It is against our practice to expose and ridicule what we stand for as healers. What Gogo Maweni is doing is unacceptable. We believe that she was practising witchcraft when she went to perform some dark rituals at night in a graveyard,” THA spokesperson Zanele Mazibuko told Scrolla.Africa.
She emphasised that Maweni is a misleading traditional healer who is a bad example of the practice.
Mazibuko further revealed that a few months ago, the association was at the hearings and finalisation of the Witchcraft Suppression Bill that has been amended. It has been redrafted as the Prohibition of Harmful Supernatural Practices Bill.
She said if the Bill is passed, people like Maweni would be charged with witchcraft and may face up to 10 years in prison.
Pictured above: Gogo Maweni
Image source: Supplied
