The Ukuthwasa Ceremony in Zimbabwe: Cultural Healing Rituals and the Tourism Question

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The Ukuthwasa ceremony in Zimbabwe does not begin with drums or dancing. It begins with illness. People who receive the calling often try modern medicine first and fail, according to Britannica, before a sangoma recognises the signs as ukuthwasa and opens an initiation that can last from months to years.

That origin matters for tourism. A festival performs on a schedule. A calling does not. Zimbabwe’s planners now ask heritage to carry the economy, and healing sits close to the centre of that heritage.

Ukuthwasa is the Nguni term for the calling and initiation that turn a person into a sangoma, a diviner-healer. In Zimbabwe, the term is best known in Ndebele-speaking Matabeleland, though Shona-speaking communities, who make up the national majority, follow their own paths into healing and spirit mediumship. The initiate, called an ithwasane, trains under a senior sangoma known as a gobela. The training takes place at a home or school called an iphehlo.

Initiates wear umcako, a white body clay, to show they are still in training. On graduating, they discard the clothes they wore during initiation. A qualified sangoma then divines with a bag of bones, the ingxowa yamathambo, and speaks for the ancestors. Ukuthwasa is a medical, spiritual and family event at once. Relatives gather, the gobela supervises, and the ancestors direct. A visitor who arrives as a spectator fits none of those roles.

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Who Carried the Ukuthwasa Ceremony in Zimbabwe

Healers and their senior teachers carried the practice, and the state eventually gave them a legal home. Parliament’s Traditional Medical Practitioners Act [Chapter 27:14] took effect on 16 October 1981, eighteen months after independence. It created a Council to supervise and control traditional medical practitioners.

The practice mattered because the formal health system struggled. In 2004, Professor Gordon Chavunduka, then president of the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (ZINATHA), told IRIN that the association counted 55,000 healers, each seeing an average of 20 patients a day. In the same report, Billy Rigava, president of the Zimbabwe Medical Association, said only 1,200 of its 2,500 registered doctors still worked in the country. These are association estimates, not audited counts, but they show where patients went when clinics failed them.

Treat the bigger claims with care. Zimbabwean healers often say that more than 80% of the population consults them. Africa Check’s 2013 investigation found that the World Health Organisation’s widely repeated claim that 80 per cent of Africans use traditional medicine rests on no survey. South Africa’s 2015 general household survey found that only 0.5% of households would go to a traditional healer first.

Today, healers have legal recognition but are not fully integrated. In 2006, Chavunduka criticised the government for refusing to let his members work from rural clinics and hospitals. ZINATHA members now also report that Pentecostal pastors steer congregants away from them.

The Tourism Question: What Zimbabwe Is Already Selling

Zimbabwe recorded 1,777,569 tourist arrivals in 2025, up from 1,613,901 in 2024, according to the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority. The country has not yet matched its 2018 peak of 2,579,974. Holidaymakers lead the recovery. Between July and September 2025, holiday arrivals rose 18% to 256,143, up from 217,651 in the same quarter of 2024, according to government statistics.

Heritage is the strategy. The Tourism and Hospitality Industry Policy (2025–2030) directs the government to promote a heritage-based approach to tourism development, and officials target a US$10 billion tourism economy by 2030.

Zimbabwe has also clustered its tourism offerings. William Stima, then acting chief executive of the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, told NewsDay in 2025 that 11 clusters are already identified, including culture and heritage, medical, rural and religious tourism. Each of those touches heals. Yet in the public policy coverage we reviewed, no document names ukuthwasa as a product, and that silence is a gap with consequences. When a ministry sells “heritage first”, as Minister Barbara Rwodzi has put it, local operators will fill the gap with their own interpretation of what sells.

A 2011 study of Goo-Moremi village in central Botswana shows what follows. Researchers found that local people regard their culture as sacred because ancestor worship governs daily life. Some residents embraced turning it into a tourism product for income. Others resisted, fearing the change would devalue their belief system.

Zimbabwe will meet the same split, and ukuthwasa raises the stakes. Initiates are often unwell, vulnerable, and under a gobela’s authority. A camera in the iphehlo turns a patient into an exhibit. Paying a fee to a tour operator, not the healer, turns a calling into a transaction. Communities in Matabeleland already show another route. Their own cultural gatherings, such as the annual festival at Professor Solwayo Ngwenya’s homestead, let families pass on Ndebele traditions on terms the hosts set.

Where the Line Should Fall

Zimbabwe can draw a clear line. The country already regulates healers, tracks arrivals by quarter. It runs a heritage-based policy, so it has the tools to protect the ceremony while still earning from the tradition around it. Four moves would do it.

First, build healer-led interpretation centres in Bulawayo and other towns, staffed and paid by registered practitioners, where visitors learn what ukuthwasa means without watching one. Second, license herbal-garden walks and storytelling sessions at consenting healers’ homes. Third, back community-run public festivals, where hosts choose what they share. Fourth, ask the Traditional Medical Practitioners Council and healers’ associations to write visitor rules that ban filming of initiates and set a revenue share that reaches the healer.

None of this costs Zimbabwe its heritage-first strategy. It protects the asset that strategy depends on. Each move also gives visitors something more honest than a glimpse through a doorway: a healer who explains, in her own words and on her own terms, why a person falls ill, answers a calling and returns as a diviner. Other destinations cannot copy that story, and a camera in the wrong room cannot tell it better.

Pressure on the tradition makes the choice urgent. Healers already compete with Pentecostal preaching, strained clinics, and street vendors who sell unregistered herbs. A fair share of tourism income could help registered practitioners train the next gobela and keep the iphehlo running. A careless rollout could do the reverse, pushing the most serious practitioners further from public view and leaving the field to those who sell spectacle.

The 2026–2030 national tourism strategy will decide which model wins. The question is not whether Zimbabwe can sell ukuthwasa. It is who holds the power to say no, and whether the next tourism plan puts that power in a healer’s hands.

Read more articles like this one on Rex Clarke Adventures. We cover African heritage, tourism potential, and the cultural economy with the depth and rigour these subjects demand. Browse our archive of African cultural and travel features and discover the continent through its own eyes.

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) And Answers 

What is ukuthwasa?

It is the calling and initiation process through which a person becomes a sangoma, a diviner-healer. It often starts with an unexplained illness that modern medicine fails to cure.

How long does the Ukuthwasa ceremony in Zimbabwe last?

According to Britannica, initiation can run from months to years, depending on the initiate and the circumstances.

Can tourists attend an Ukuthwasa ceremony in Zimbabwe?

RCA’s position is no. We found no public tourism programme that offers it, and the initiate’s health and consent come first. Visitors can learn about it through healer-led talks and public cultural events.

Are traditional healers regulated in Zimbabwe?

Yes. The Traditional Medical Practitioners Act [Chapter 27:14], in force since 16 October 1981, established a Council to supervise and regulate the practice.

How can I engage with Zimbabwean healing traditions respectfully?

Ask a registered practitioner or association first, pay the healer directly, follow their photography rules, and treat their consent as final.