Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
04 July 2022 | Story Edzani Nephalela | Photo Edzani Nephalela
Faculty of Theology and Religion
From left to right: Dr Joel Mokhoathi, Ronel Ellis, Dr Nomfundo Mlisa, Prof Pieter Vester and Rev Jacob Makhutso

Growing up, many of us were raised in Christian homes practising specific morals and values, and anything outside of that was considered immoral or even ‘demonic’. However, what happens when you have a dual identity, and you embrace a bit of both?

On 29 June 2022, the University of the Free State Faculty of Theology presented a Table Talk Webinar with Dr Nomfundo Mlisa, titled ‘African Christianity: interconnections between religion, culture, and identity’. These webinars cover a variety of burning topics that deal with contentious issues across the country. Attendees emerged from various parts of the world, including Nigeria and Germany.

Dr Mlisa is a published author, qualified nurse, traditional healer, as well as preacher of the Word. Her talk was based on personal experiences of being Xhosa and being brought up as a member of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa in a strict Christian environment. She was on her journey to becoming a preacher when she realised that she needed to undergo the spiritual healing training (ukhuthwasa) and was faced with resistance from the church minister/s, forcing her to leave church because ukuthwasa was against the church policies.

Her journey has been challenging, because she only acknowledged her ancestral calling at the age of 42, following a series of occurrences that nearly cost her her children. Dr Mlisa hinted that, besides being against church policy, one of the reasons was that the Xhosa nation considered ukhuthwasa to be witchcraft due to the similarity in the pronunciation of words: ukhuthwasa, meaning undergoing spiritual training; ukuthwala, which is an ancient activity of gaining powers for wealth; and ukhuthakatha, meaning witchcraft.

“Rev Mabusela of the Methodist Church invited me back to the church and I was ordained as a reverend. However, my ordination was held at the East London Correctional Services, and it was then that I realised I was a prisoner of faith and tradition,” she said.

Is there a link between ukuthwasa and Christianity?

Besides the fact that philosophy could not prove the linkage, Dr Mlisa said that the link exists, but Christianity has strongly influenced Africans to integrate Christian values into their cultural value systems, as evidenced by various authors. This led to various people with spiritual calling disowning their cultural identities as well as their being.

“In Christianity, there are faith healers and prophets, whereas culturally, we have traditional healers; however, they have one objective, which is to heal the people. But because people wanted to accommodate their gifts in Christianity, such names were given. Furthermore, Christians recognise angels, while traditionally, ancestors are recognised,” she explained.

Looking into different practices in both the Traditional and Christian religions, they both have elements of training, ‘ukhuthwasa’. This is mainly because they all undergo different types of training under a senior person. A senior faith healer trains a junior, whereas a ‘gobela’ trains a traditional healer.

The society is also coming to accept all religions, with most people now wearing traditional healer beads everywhere, including work. There are also traditional healers who are modern doctors, demonstrating that these innate or hereditary abilities are a common language.

News Archive

Dr Chantel Swart the ‘Expert on Stage’
2013-06-04

 

Presents Extraordinary Findings at International Nanomedicine Conference.
Photo: Sonia Small
04 June 2013

Dr Chantel Swart, an alumnus of the Prestige Scholars Programme (PSP) from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology, is an invited “Expert on Stage” at the 4th International Nanomedicine Conference to be held in Sydney, Australia from 1 – 3 July 2013.

She is to share the podium with world authorities in nanomedicine.

Dr Swart’s presentation, “A New Nanotechnology for Nanomedicine”, will convey findings that made international headlines. She is part of the nanotechnology group of Prof Lodewyk Kock that discovered gas bubbles inside cells when using Auger-architectomics, a nanotechnology they developed in 2010. This nanotechnology is used to track nanomedicine inside cancer cells in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic in the US.

The Kock Nanotechnology Group includes scholars from the departments of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology, Physics, Chemistry, the Centre for Microscopy (all from the UFS) and South African Breweries. Their breakthrough is also showcased on the cover of all issues of 2013 FEMS Yeast Research, a leading journal in yeast research. BiotecVisions and Global Medical Discovery (GMD) both selected this work for worldwide promotion at the end of 2012.

Dr Swart’s future research will use this newly-developed nanotechnology to visualize and hence explore the exposed nano-world. This will include work on the architecture of cells and effects of various drugs on cell metabolism.

A virtual tour is available at: http://vimeo.com/user6296337/videos.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept