If asked to name a South African Sangoma, most people would mention Credo Mutwa, a world renowned traditional healer, aouther and a philosopher. He had forseen a number of historic events including the assasination of John Fitzegerald Kennedy, Hendrik Verwoerd and Chris Hani. but he was modest about it all.
"I am not special. There are men and women who came before me in this regard," he once told a TV host when he was asked about his unusual gift of seeing into the crystal ball.
He had famously predicted the June 16 1976 student uprisings, but what's not well-known is that he was gracious enough to reveal that there were other people who predicted the watershed event-peers and pupils who all lived in Soweto at the time.
Incidentally, all three women- Lillian, Mateilari Teka and Dorcas Danisa.
He described the latter as "two of the best sangomas in the group of healers and deviners of which I am the ritual leader".
In his book, Let Not My Country die, he recounts Danisa's vision in 1975.
"In the vision she saw the Virgin Mary holding a calender in her hand, and telling her that death and conflict were coming to South Africa, and that happened she, Mrs Danisa, was to go out into the streets and try and save black children from being killed.I, Credo Mutwa, was to assist her in my capacity as High Sanusi. It was because of this strange vision that on June 16, 1976, when the violence erupted in Soweto, Dorcas and i donned out best regalia and walked to Phafeni station where the rioting was fiercest, and tried to persuade school children to go home." said Mutwa.
"We managed to persuade only 10 frightened youngsters to leave the place of flame and violence, and then waled back home with despairing and exhausted hearts; our mission having failed."
But what Mutwa and his initiates believed was an act of goodwill for children would backfire tragically on him.
Some residents accused him of having advised the government to order the police to shoot the marching pupils. His house in Diepkloof, Soweto was stoned and burnt by angry youths.
However, his family managed to escape with their lives. For while thy hid in the KwaZulu-Natal countryside.
However, the news of the government introducing the 30-year leased scheme for homeowners encouraged him to return to Soweto.
Despite that, the situation remained tense, and for many nights the family was terrorised with bullet shots by unknown gunmen. Though no one was fatally injured, the message was clear that they were no longer welcome in Soweto.
In 1978, a chance meeting with President Lucas Mangope would open a new chapter in his life. The leader of the then recently declered independent homeland of Buphuthatswana invited him to settle in Mahikeng. Here in the land of Barolong people, he built another cultural museum on a pleasure resort named Letlomoreng Dam.
Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa was born on July 21 1921 in Msinga, an area in the heartland of KwaZulu-Natal notorious for faction fights among local clans.
"From early childhood I grew accustomed to the sight of death in its most horrid and vieolent form," he recalled.
While still an infant, he was baptised into the Roman Catholic Church at the bhest of his father, a staunch Christian belief catechist, and was given the name Credo.
His mother, Nomabunu, was the daughter of Ziko shezi, a royal counsellor and veteran of the Battle of Ulundi, the historic 1879 conflict with the british that ended the Anglo-Zulu wars, and paved the way for British colonial domination in the region and other parts of Southern Africa.
Because Mutwa's mother, a Zulu traditionalist, refused to convert to his father's religion, the couple separated shortly after his birth. So he was raised by Shezi and initiated as his apprentice with the enviable task of carrying the revered muthiman's medicine bags.
Whem he was barely seven, his father obtained custody of the boy against his mother's wishes. They settled on a white man's farm in the Potchefstroom district in the then Western Transvaal.
It was here in 1932 that he was first exposed to the brute force of white racism when his brother, Emmanuel, was whipped to death by the farm owner, his father's employer.
In 1945, he responded to the ancestral call to be trained as a sangoma after he was afflicted with a series of strange illness that Western-trained doctors did not understand. He would prove to be a very succesful sangoma and like his grandfather, he eventually achieved the status of Isanusi.
He reasoned that it was best to share the hidden wisdom of Africa with the rest of the world to forge a better understanding between different races and cultures.
Secondly, he felt that it was important to reveal the continent's glorious past as the cradle of human civilisation. He accomplished these goals in a masterful way following the publication of his first and most celebrated work, Indaba, My Children in 1964.
Since childhood Mutwa has demonstrated ubnusual talent for painting and sculpting. His jobs included working at a pottery firm, and in 1954 he was employed at a curio shop in Johhanesburg.
In Kenya, he was fascinated by the blacksmith craftsmanship of the Gikuyu. They smelt catridge shell cases which had come out the Mau-Mau anti-colonial war. He said this inspired the building of his cultural village in Soweto which today is one of the township's famous landmarks.
This is where his genious as a painter and sculptor was first exposed to the public.
A 1979 paiting of an aeroplane plunging into New York's Twin Towers is prophercy on canvas, testemony to the fact that he was indeed an exceptionally versatile creative spirit, a rare cultural treasure and a prophet who now belong to the ages.
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