INCENSE burned gently in the corner of a sunlit room as sangoma Makhosi Malatji fixed her smartphone into a tripod and reached for a small bag of divination bones.
A young female face on the screen watched Malatji shake the pouch and scatter its contents across the floor of her Johannesburg home.
She angled the phone to make sure her client could follow and began interpreting the bone pattern, finding cues that prompted the woman to open up about a distressing family feud.
Like traditional healers across the country, Malatji (37) took an ancient practice online last year to continue offering consultations under strict coronavirus restrictions.
The shift has fired a budding pre-pandemic trend of younger traditional healers already engaging clients through social media and video calls.
“Before COVID I had never used a phone or laptop to do a consultation,” said Malatji, who trained over a decade ago.
“It
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