Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun South Africa A witch doctor, traditional herbalist, or traditional healer.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a traditional Zulu healer and respected elder

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Zulu isangoma.

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Examples

  • Thomas Heathfield was a well-paid banking consultant with a promising career in Maidenhead, England, but gave it up this year to move to South Africa and endure rigorous training as a "sangoma" - or witch doctor.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2011

  • A sangoma is a learned practitioner of traditional African mysticism and soothsaying, healer and spiritualist, a medium between the physical world and the otherworldly dimension of ancestors.

    Thestar.com - Home Page 2010

  • "We are happy that the country is recognizing us," says Gaobepe, who describes herself as a "sangoma", a healer whose distinctiveness lies in her spiritual link with the ancestors.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2004

  • The parents told AFP that the spells of the "sangoma" witchdoctors to bring the children back will fail if the bodies are interred.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1995

  • But in Africa, where mysticism and magic play a part in many people's lives, pronouncements from a '' sangoma '' such as Nsukwini can carry as much weight as those from governments, especially when it comes to the murky world of security agencies.

    Daily News & Analysis 2010

  • Mashabela, a senior "sangoma" has also displayed a poster that reads "My friend with AIDS is still my friend.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2004

  • Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa.

    miriam makeba | mama afrika « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2008

  • *The school starts with the circumcision that is done by a traditional healer or a sangoma.

    Initiation School Megan aka Mmapula Reamogetse 2009

  • She had gone to a sangoma traditional healer when she started feeling sick and he had told her that she was too sick for his help.

    Archive 2009-08-01 Megan aka Mmapula Reamogetse 2009

  • She had gone to a sangoma traditional healer when she started feeling sick and he had told her that she was too sick for his help.

    That Blue Sky Megan aka Mmapula Reamogetse 2009

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