The Sunday News
Peter Matika Senior Leisure Reporter
A LOCAL group of traditional healers has dared to venture into the impossible, as they seek to establish a “traditional healers’ church”, which will cater for both Christians and traditionalists.While many people still find it very much unconventional to seek the assistance of a traditional healer, as they are perceived to be people who draw their powers from dark world, the group aims at unifying traditionalists and Christians.
The church, which is yet to be named, will be headed by none other than Bulawayo’s popular traditional healer, Eddington Virimayi, affectionately known as SaManyika.
In an interview he said as a group of licensed and professional healers, they were in the process of negotiating with relevant authorities but had already garnered the support of many traditional healers.
“This is a first of its kind. We have already gathered enough support to establish the church and all the provinces in Zimbabwe are in favour of the notion. This church will cater for both spiritual and ancestral beliefs,” he said.
SaManyika said as a group of traditional healers they were inspired to establish the church after they realised that there were a number of cases involving witchcraft.
“People use a lot of charms and juju these days to enrich themselves. Most of these people tend to want to dump these charms, after they find them useless or want to be Christians, on family members or just general people who are then bothered and haunted by this dark magic. It is on that backdrop that we found it important to establish such a church so as to assist those that want to dispose of their charms and other incantations. We will also help Christians, as this not only affects traditionalists but Christians as well. The manner in which people surrender their spirits nowadays is not done in the proper manner and we seek to fix that so as to prevent bad luck befalling innocent people,” he said.
SaManyika added that they had already spoken to other traditional healers from other countries, who said they would be willing to assist in the establishment of the church, which they hope to see spread across the continent and beyond.
He said they had spoken to traditional healers from South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Malawi.
“Nigerians have also shown a keen interest on this idea and are willing to be part of it. This is for the good of the people of every country and we hope to see a reduction in cases of witchcraft,” said SaManyika.
