A SANGOMA'S CREDENTIALS Wim van Binsbergen

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View below:

• the official license as issued to Wim van Binsbergen by the Kwame (Legwame) Traditional Association of Botswana, one of the few professional organizations of traditional healers to be recognised by the government of the Republic of Botswana;
• photographs of Wim van Binsbergen's two principal teachers of divination in Francistown, Botswana: Mrs Elizabeth Mabutu ('MmaShakayile'), who was his mentrix initiating him into sangoma-hood, and the herbalist Mr Smarts Gumede.
• Photographs of two crucial moments in Wim van Binsbergen's graduation as sangoma after a one-year twaza period, at Matshelagabedi, Northeast District, Botswana.

	Official license, signed by Mr. G. Sinombe, chair of the Kwame (Legwame) Traditional Association of Botswana
	MmaShakayile casting her divination tablets in the shrine at her plot in the Monarch residential area, Francistown, 2 september 1990, seeking to ascertain whether the sacrificial offerings made by Wim van Binsbergen on the occasion of his accession to twaza-hood (learner-diviner) were accepted by the spirits; a year later he was to come out of twaza status and to graduate as a fully-fledged sangoma diviner-priest.
	Mr Smarts Gumede, a prominent Francistown herbalist until his death in 1992, casting his divining tablets in his surgery in the Somerset East residential area, 11 October, 1989
	In Matshelagabedi at the western shrine commemorating male ancestors, a goat (one of a sacrifice of three goats and an oxen) is immolated by fellow-sangomas, as the principal sign that Wim van Binsbergen's twaza period has come to an end; the candidate for graduation is squatting due left; drums are warming up in the sun.
	Mrs Jeanette Mabutu, niece of MmaShakayile, and her lodge's specialist drummer, supervises the first time in a year that the candidate for graduation eats intestines (those of his sacrificial goat), which had been forbidden while he was a twaza and hence himself a foetus symbolically located inside a body

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page last modified: 16-03-02 19:16:59