<p>The 70-year-old fortune teller, a cheerful lady called Constance, plays a critical role in Zulu culture, blessed with special powers to heal and divine the future. But she was mighty hard to find.<br /><br />A two-day search aided by street sellers and shop owners in the southern city of Port Elizabeth had produced nothing but a series of false dawns.<br /><br />It appeared one needed a sangoma to find a sangoma.<br /><br />Then a toothless lady of indeterminate age kneading dough on a pavement beside a taxi rank suggested trying a muthi herbal specialist off Govan Mbeki Road.<br /><br />The shop, an Aladdin’s cave of pills and potions and ointments, had a high counter behind which were two people.<br /><br />One, a man, had his face painted in tribal warpaint. The other, a woman, was Constance.<br />“You’ve made it,” she smiled, as if she had been expecting the visit all the time. After negotiating her fee, Constance opened a door into a storeroom packed with sacks of dried roots and animal hides hanging from a makeshift washing line.<br /><br />Through a curtain at the back was her “office” — with a frayed floral couch, more bags of herbs and plant extracts, and shelves crammed with somewhat incongruous tins of Jeyes Fluid household cleaner.<br /><br />“I use all this to make my medicines,” she said, easing her generous frame into a chair beside, which was a small table with incense and a yellow candle. “When someone comes to me and wants me to help them with trouble in their life or look into the future, I get them to light this candle. That way I can see through them, I can see what the problem is,” she explained.<br /><br />“I help cure people who are mad or who have AIDS using ‘muthi’.” Constance has been a sangoma for 12 years. “My father and my sister were sangomas, and when they died they came to me in a dream and told me ‘you have to be a sangoma now’,” she said. “I didn’t want to, but they made me ill. They hit me with sticks, I couldn’t walk. They sent me into the sea for seven days to sleep. When I woke up I accepted to become a sangoma. I went away to train for one year. Then my ancestors came back to me and said ‘you can finish the training now, you are a sangoma’. I then slaughtered five goats and one cow.”<br /><br />She says she has many clients, rich and poor, black and white, old and young, who turn to her for a multitude of reasons. Football players also turn to herbalists for potions, balms or talismans to boost their performance or treat injuries.<br /><br />Asked about the World Cup, Constance shuts her eyes, as if asleep, in meditation, then opens them sharply. “All the teams here are strong, but I have to consult my ancestors, I have to ask them what they think, and they will tell me in my dream tonight. Come back tomorrow, and I will have your answer.”<br /><br />The next day, Constance is again waiting behind the counter, with the answer not to eternity but almost as important. “Argentina will win the World Cup.”<br /></p>
<p>The 70-year-old fortune teller, a cheerful lady called Constance, plays a critical role in Zulu culture, blessed with special powers to heal and divine the future. But she was mighty hard to find.<br /><br />A two-day search aided by street sellers and shop owners in the southern city of Port Elizabeth had produced nothing but a series of false dawns.<br /><br />It appeared one needed a sangoma to find a sangoma.<br /><br />Then a toothless lady of indeterminate age kneading dough on a pavement beside a taxi rank suggested trying a muthi herbal specialist off Govan Mbeki Road.<br /><br />The shop, an Aladdin’s cave of pills and potions and ointments, had a high counter behind which were two people.<br /><br />One, a man, had his face painted in tribal warpaint. The other, a woman, was Constance.<br />“You’ve made it,” she smiled, as if she had been expecting the visit all the time. After negotiating her fee, Constance opened a door into a storeroom packed with sacks of dried roots and animal hides hanging from a makeshift washing line.<br /><br />Through a curtain at the back was her “office” — with a frayed floral couch, more bags of herbs and plant extracts, and shelves crammed with somewhat incongruous tins of Jeyes Fluid household cleaner.<br /><br />“I use all this to make my medicines,” she said, easing her generous frame into a chair beside, which was a small table with incense and a yellow candle. “When someone comes to me and wants me to help them with trouble in their life or look into the future, I get them to light this candle. That way I can see through them, I can see what the problem is,” she explained.<br /><br />“I help cure people who are mad or who have AIDS using ‘muthi’.” Constance has been a sangoma for 12 years. “My father and my sister were sangomas, and when they died they came to me in a dream and told me ‘you have to be a sangoma now’,” she said. “I didn’t want to, but they made me ill. They hit me with sticks, I couldn’t walk. They sent me into the sea for seven days to sleep. When I woke up I accepted to become a sangoma. I went away to train for one year. Then my ancestors came back to me and said ‘you can finish the training now, you are a sangoma’. I then slaughtered five goats and one cow.”<br /><br />She says she has many clients, rich and poor, black and white, old and young, who turn to her for a multitude of reasons. Football players also turn to herbalists for potions, balms or talismans to boost their performance or treat injuries.<br /><br />Asked about the World Cup, Constance shuts her eyes, as if asleep, in meditation, then opens them sharply. “All the teams here are strong, but I have to consult my ancestors, I have to ask them what they think, and they will tell me in my dream tonight. Come back tomorrow, and I will have your answer.”<br /><br />The next day, Constance is again waiting behind the counter, with the answer not to eternity but almost as important. “Argentina will win the World Cup.”<br /></p>
