FEATURE: Africans need to stop demonising their beliefs
Africans need to go back to their roots, says spiritually gifted millennial.
CAPE TOWN, November 18 (ANA) – Africans need to go back to their roots and stop demonising their beliefs, says Dineo Nkewana, a spiritually gifted millennial.
Being a spiritually gifted person means that you are more sensitive than others.
Spiritually gifted people often have the discernment to see things that are present in the room that others can’t see. They have visions and are able to communicate with ancestors.
Nkewana, 26, is from Montana, Cape Town, in South Africa. She graduated at the University of Western Cape and holds a Bachelor of Administration Honours in Public Administration.
She says that she first knew that she had a calling about 10 years ago but has always resisted honouring it.
A calling can show up through a myriad of signs, for Nkewana it was through her dreams, visions and having other sangomas tell her in passing that she needed to honour her calling.
In Southern Africa, sangomas are traditional healers or diviners.
Her mother would take her to church and everything would get lost in translation, she says.
When one is showing signs of being a spiritually gifted person, Nkewana says it is easy for people to associate it with mental illnesses or assume that one is possessed with evil spirits.
“I wanted to hear nothing about it,” she told African News Agency (ANA).
She says people are so ignorant when it comes to African spirituality, automatically when you’re a traditional healer you’re labelled as a witch because communicating with ancestors is part of the devils work – so they say.
Late last year, she decided to consult an established sangoma to shed some light because nothing seemed to be working and she felt she was losing her mind.
The sangoma confirmed what Nkewana had always run away from, that she indeed needed to honour her calling as a sangoma.
She has started her journey as an initiate where she is being taught how to heal people, what certain herbs are for and everything she needs to know as a sangoma. Nkewana expects to graduate before the end of November.
Nkewana says before she accepted her calling, it affected her career. She would constantly be tired, sleeping almost the whole day and she was temperamental.
However, she says finally accepting her calling has changed her life for the better.
“I’m more in tune with the energy around me. I have a more positive look on life and I now have more confidence.”
The beauty of being a spiritually gifted person is helping people, she says.
“I have always loved helping people and now that I am actually called for it, to heal people, using African herbs, is amazing,” Nkewana says.
The challenge for her was changing who she was and becoming who she is meant to be.
“It was such a lonely journey but isolation was needed in order for my third eye to open up.
“It was a huge adjustment because now my ancestors live in me and it shows through my behaviour and actions,” Nkewana says.
She can’t wait to pass down this knowledge to her own kids one day and teach them how to make herbs for certain illnesses, Nkewana says.
She says because being spiritually gifted is not something you choose, the longer you resist accepting it, the longer you suffer.
She encourages others who are in the same boat to pray, meditate, speak to their ancestors and consult before accepting it just to ensure that one is on the right path.
“Listen to that inner voice. That’s your main guide,” Nkewana says.
– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Naomi Mackay