This and that with Maluphosa:- Wadliswa Ngubani

African medicine is very exciting and frightening at the same time; exciting to the student and researcher but frightening to the credulous and superstitious villager.
Unlike European medicine, African doctors offer concoctions for love, hate, riches, harm, virility, protection, exorcism, appeasement of ancestors, and much more.
Surprisingly, unlike European medicine whose name,  ingredients, indications and directions are neatly written on the container, African muti has brief instructions on the wrapping packet; like 'chatha', 'khotha', 'natha', 'thunqisela', 'chela', 'xubha', and the rest of the information, except, of course, ingredients, are given orally!
There are crude examples of instructions gone very wrong. Imagine gurgling with a portion meant for an enema, and you really don't know the ingredients of the mixture!
As it were, African medicine could be itchy to the skin, cause rashes or bruising, be bitter, sour, mucoid and slippery, choking, repulsively pungent - but this is exactly how it should work. Its healing power lies in the pain and discomfort it causes.
Do you believe in the power of love portions? There is no scientific evidence they work. In fact, no scientific evidence is required to prove the potency of love portions. Our bemused and baffled brothers and sons are glaring evidence of the path of this tsunami. And there is many a story of relatives quarrelling with omakoti for ukudlisa amadodana.
The in-laws claim that their sons are no-longer loyal to clan values; cannot think straight as they used to before the makoti joined the family; are perpetually drowsy; jump at makoti's instructions; never have a word about their own money; go to their own parents empty-handed but visit their in-laws with Shop-rite on the bus carrier; prefer to stay with osibali instead of their own siblings; the charges are endless.
Omakoti usually plead innocence and blame everything on 'love'. The perceived victims will threaten grievous bodily harm if you as much as hint that they 'ate'.                                                                                                                      A lady teacher who wanted to strengthen her lover's love had an undesired rude awakening. She narrated her story over a radio station on a program named 'Forum'. She had been ordered to buy a piece of liver, shove it into her igwayi over-night, and fry it in the morning for her husband who worked night duty at NRZ.
She mixed it with some herbs and did as instructed. In the morning she fried it and dished it out with isitshwala. The big man devoured his meal like a street kid. And trouble started. He would find one excuse after another just to bunk work and stay home with his beloved. In the end he was shown the door for absenteeism.
He became a miserable vagabond who could neither think nor talk until spoken to. He had drifted into a perpetual dreamland, almost always asleep or sitting still, like a scare crow on a wind-less day. His actions were all in slow motion as the medicine took its toll on his reflexes. 
He virtually resembled patients at ENgutsheni, who are chronically on CPZ (umandundu); slurred speech, slow movements, drooling, gaping, staring and laughing at nothing and talking nonsense - just existing and oblivious to their surroundings.
One day the teacher is called to the head-master's office to meet her visitor; and who does she find but her blessed husband, with their baby strapped to his back! As if that was not embarrassing enough, a week later he attends assembly, the baby hanging precariously on his back. She was talk of town until she transferred to another school in a different location.
People advised her to go back to the old woman who had prescribed this treatment to her. The old lady had died. Alright, live with it, or him. Is it not what you wanted? If it had been your own son fed with such breakfast, would you have loved it? People quizzed her over the radio.   A friend of mine says he once found his brother's wife crouching on a pot of isitshebo! He says he watched helplessly as the steam hit her igwayi, condensed and dripped back into the little pot. For fear of a skirmish with his brother, he spoke no evil.                                                                                                                  A lot of scary things are used to sharpen love. My grandfather would pulverize both his wives if he saw a tail-less lizard around his home. It is said the tail is the main ingredient of hard-hitting isidliso. The discharge from the eyes of newly-born puppies is also meant to ensure that the victim is eternally 'blind'; he never complains of anything; he is always at home, or behind the kitchen, like the lizard; he never leers at other women. He is the type that you would call 'umbongendlu', or 'us'bhodandlu'.                                                                      The worst concoction I heard about was the one where the woman uses the blood from her monthly period, with her faeces, toe-nails, hair and discharge from her igwayi, eye-lashes, breast milk, pigeon's 'eggs', and certain creatures like the snail and chameleon. These are used in small quantities to spice our food. All the while she is talking alone; about her problems and wishes, and asking the concoction to tame the beast she stays with. And when we get home, we are Oliver Twists. God help our sons and brothers.
 In the end it real doesn't matter whether one 'ate' the best or the worst concoction; the result is always the same, more or less; a helpless, sleepy, clueless, sloppy, shattered, castrated, mangled, individual leading a carefree life.                                                                                                                                     Personal experience? Yes, of course. An old lady comes to the clinic one morning after having been bitten by a snake. She is half alive. I'm not sure what I gave her. Whatever it was it worked miracles. After about five hours she is wondering where she is. She remembers vaguely what happened to her. She recalls her 'dream' of her parents, grand-parents and dolls in white robes while she 'slept'. Well, all this is irrelevant.
Before I discharge her home, she tells me she has a confession to make. My local small-house had gone to her three months ago to seek help about her boy-friend, she says. And she helped her because that is what she did for a living. She gave me examples of more men caught up in the same web; respectable men who had deserted good jobs in town, just to be with their wives.  I was genuinely amazed. I realized I also needed my small-house to be always close to me or to be where I could see her, all the time.                                                       But I was interested more in what mixture I had eaten to feel this way. I wished I had not asked; hair and sweat from the girl's armpit; dirt scraped from under her feet and from her tongue; the first and last streams of her urine; dead skin from her nipple; wax from her ears; milk from ithokazi le donki; and some herbs to boost the mixture and banish the nauseating stench. Yes; all these and perhaps more. I wanted to retch. I didn't. I couldn't.                                                                                                      'I must say,' l said to her finally, 'I'm very lucky I'm not like the men you mentioned.' But she didn't agree with me. She explained that are there some people who are naturally hard to dlisa, though not impossible. Still, my wife had suffered trying to make me see sense, which at the time was pure nonsense.     A song that was a hit at beer drinking meets, not because it was beautiful but because it provoked those suspected of having 'eaten', went this way'Wadliswa ng'bani? Ngunyoko-zala; Wadliswa ng'bani? Ngunyoko-zala owapheki'dobi wahlala phezulu.Diwo, diwo luyavuma!'When the elders say 'diwo luyavuma' to you, wake up! And, imagine if ules'thembu!