THE entertainment industry has seen several celebrities who publicly announced that they are becoming izangoma and later dump it for Christianity.
The president of Dingaka Association, Andrew Mashime Somo, said once you thwasa to be a sangoma, you die a sangoma. You can't change.
"If you are not inyanga but want to be rich, especially celebrities, they like snakes. You cannot use inyoka if no one has ever used it in your family.
"That's the same with this: if you are inyanga and you change to be a Christian, the problem is that your kids or grandkids will not be successful in life," Somo said.
Gugu Msibi, who is a traditional healer, said if you just dump ubungoma, there will be consequences.
"You can't resign from it; you are born with it. You can stop practising but you can't stop being a sangoma. You need to conduct a ceremony and plead with your ancestors and wait for their response, whether they allow for you to stop.
"The consequences could be a car accident, losing any material things that you have," Msibi said.
Here are some of the celebrities who became izangoma.
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Brenda Ngxoli
The 43-year-old actress told Daily Sun that she traded the ubungoma journey for Christianity, for Jesus Christ, and she just thought it was not necessarily for her at this moment in time.
"I think it's not necessarily for me at this moment. It has its own people. The most important thing now is the sky. Secondly, my career and appreciating what God has blessed me with," she said.
Boity Thulo
The rapper took everyone by surprise in 2016 when she took to social media to confirm that she was set to undergo training to become a sangoma. She later referred to herself as Gogo Nomakhwezi.
Earlier in 2024, she announced on her social media X that she was going to church for the first time in seven years.
Thabiso Mokhethi
The former Generations actor gave up ubungoma and returned to his Christianity. The actor told the SunTeam in 2023 that when he's in church and preaching the word of God, he has peace.
"I realised that one of the reasons I practised as a sangoma was from fear, but God didn't give me a spirit of fear," he said.
Bongani Masondo
Former Skeem Saam actor Bongani Masondo became a sangoma in 2011, and later, he had to put ubungoma on hold to resume his acting and music career.
Palesa Madisakwane
The actress told Daily Sun she was not a sangoma in 2023. She's never been a sangoma, and she would never be one. She was told she needed to thwasa, but she never went ahead with it.
"At that time, I thought it wouldn't hurt to go and find out what was happening in my life. I think that was the biggest mistake I made as a child of God. I walked away from Christ, consulting opened doors to the kingdom of darkness.
"And I'm not saying that all izingoma are in the dark, I don't know about that. But what I do know is that it brought darkness into my life. I would dream of izangoma telling me to go and thwasa. And I began to wonder what was happening. When I went to consult, I was told I had to become a sangoma," she said.
Andrew Somo mentioned that celebrities control their gobelas because they have money. He said the period of the spiritual journey is 12 months, but now people go for two months and say they want to go home, and that becomes a problem because they have not finished the journey.
"When you start the spiritual journey, it's 12 months. But because nowadays people have money, they want to control us and tell us they want to take two or three months because they need to go work," he said.
Solly Mathebula, who is a gobela, said there's difference between someone who has a calling and a person who claims to have a gift.
"People dump ubungoma because they think this is a business, but it's not. They think you just wake up and become a celebrity sangoma. It's highly impossible to for an initiation for two months," said Solly.
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