Traditional healers have called on government to scrap the act which regulates them‚ saying it tramples their rights to practice.
Instead‚ they want to be self-regulated.
Traditional healers are currently regulated by the Traditional Health Practitioners Act‚ which was passed in 2014.
“We have been saying that the best methodology is self-regulation. When we talk about traditional healing‚ there is nothing as important as self-regulation‚” said Phepsile Maseko‚ the national co-ordinator of the Traditional Healers Organisation.
Maseko was speaking at a seminar on traditional healers practitioners’ regulations hosted by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural‚ Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Commission) in Johannesburg on Friday.
“They [government] called us in 2016 to talk about the regulations. They brought a draft and asked our input but they did not take any of our suggestions‚” Maseko said.
She said traditional healers should not be regulated as they were born with the gift of healing and did not go to school for it.