| Summary: | African healing tradition is holistic by nature, involving an essential unity between the spiritual, psycho-somatic and social dimension of health. All these dimensions constitute an inseparable part of the total therapeutic system. The traditional conception of health and illness in Africa is connected to a wider framework of religion and social reality. Illness is thus not seen as a mere disruption of physical and psychological integrity of an individual, but as an affliction caused by the intervention of different invisible powers such as spirits, demons, ghosts and witches that are believed to penetrate the whole of life. Diagnostic, therapeutic and prophylactic activity of the traditional healers – ngangas (how they are called in many Bantu languages) as well as prophets of African independent churches, namely those of Pentecostal and charismatic type, are based on a common culturally shared aetiology such as natural diseases, spirit possession and witchcraft. Indigenous African healing was historically shaped by process of colonialism during which the traditional medicine was rather persecuted, on the contrary the epoch of post-colonialism brought its revalorization, its recognition by most of the African national government. The traditional medicine of many African states today is thus represented as a constitutive part of national cultural heritage.
|
|---|
