Traditional healers have always played a role in African soccer. But now Africa's image-conscious football body has banned these 'wise men' from the pitch. James Hall of Gemini News Service talks to one of the healers in the Southern African kingdom of Swaziland to find out if the ban is really the continent's best medicine.

Mbabane -- Worried about the image of African soccer abroad, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has banned "team advisors" - a euphemism for traditional healers - from the 2002 African Cup of Nations.

"The African Nations Cup is Africa's ultimate sporting event, and the proscription against so-called team advisors is to distance the series from presenting a Third World image," the Confederation said in a mid-January statement.

"We are no more willing to see witchdoctors on the pitch than cannibals at the concession stands," the statement said. "Image is everything."

The directive infuriates one traditional healer in Southern Africa's kingdom of Swaziland.

"They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, just because some soccer administrators wish to appease the white man more than honour African culture," argues Inyoni Matsebula, a sangoma or diviner/healer whose clients believe he can cure their ailments through the intervention of ancestral spirits.

He angrily adds: "They call us 'witchdoctors', which is a racist pejorative left over from colonial times, and is used by self-loathing Africans."

Self-loathing is one emotion never attributed to the African Cup of Nations, a celebration of soccer skills for a football-mad continent.

The 2002 tournament, which opened on 19 January, ends when the two top teams play the final match on 10 February in Mali.

African soccer administrators feel the success of the biannual African Cup of Nations will pave the way for the continent to finally host soccer's prestigious World Cup, a goal that has so far eluded Africa.

While some soccer players, administrators and fans agree that superstitious practices should be kept away from the game, traditional healers provide some teams with legitimate medical and psychological assistance.

"There should be a way to discriminate between the good that healers do - they are like team doctors - and harmful practices like casting spells," says Bheki Mamba, a Swazi soccer referee and administrator.

Matsebula also makes the distinction: "There are those medicine men employed by some soccer teams who run around the football pitch burying charms and vials of powders. If a member of an opposing team steps over this, misfortune will follow. He will play poorly, or have an injury."

On the other hand, he says, "I have worked with soccer teams to improve their performance with herbal medicines. I call upon the ancestral spirits to guide the team, and enhance the skills of the players."

It is this psychological lift, sometimes received in pre-game conferences that look like prayer sessions, that some teams are reluctant to discard. The very presence of friendly healers, some of whom are believed to possess supernatural powers, is a boost to players. The healers also provide first aid and traditional medical services, like "cleansing" purgatives said to make athletes perform better.

Matsebula illustrates by showing Gemini News Service how he applies his skills. He travels to the woods above the central Swazi town of Mliba, where he shoots down a sparrow with a slingshot to obtain the key ingredient for a potion he is making for a local football team. The bird's dried internal organs are ground up with roots and special plants selected from a nearby stream, and mixed with cow fat to make a waxy concoction.

Matsebula calls the players one by one into his mud hut, and pricks their skin with a porcupine quill over their legs, backs and sides. Into the pinpricks he rubs the potion, which enters the athlete's bloodstream.

"This will make him faster, and will improve his reflexes and eyesight," the healer says.

As proof, he offers anecdotes of the many players who say they performed better after such treatments, and the teams who call on him for his potions.

The players themselves say they were ordered by their team manager to undergo the treatment, and while none object to the operation, no player expects a miraculous improvement in his play.

"Everyone knows if you want to do well you have to train hard, eat right, get rest, and avoid AIDS," says goalie Sibusiso Kunene. "But it is good to have a healer with us."

CAF administrators feel differently, and share the view of soccer fan Benjamin Shabangu: "You see these 'team doctors' sprinkling stuff around the tunnel where the players run into the stadium, and some teams refuse to come out. It's embarrassing. The stuff may just be talcum powder, but it plays on people's superstitions."

Such incidents have incited riots in the past, a spectacle the African Cup of Nations seeks to avoid.

Nations that have used "wise men" in the past include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Togo and Zambia, according to The Times of Swaziland newspaper. Swaziland's national team has no resident traditional healer, though individual players are treated privately.

"Team healers may be banned from the soccer pitch, but they can always buy tickets to games and there are always ways to do good medicine," Matsebula says. "But CAF is right to ban medicine men who cast spells because they make Africans look like primitives and, just between you and me, the spells never work." - GEMINI NEWS

About the Author: JAMES HALL is an author and journalist based in Swaziland.