By Ken Wells

     Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

     26 October 1992

     Copyright Dow Jones & Co.

     JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Doris Makhele, baby on her back, stoops under a curtain of hanging animal parts. At a counter, just past a mummified, eviscerated baboon, she finds the on-duty doctor.

     Mrs. Makhele is worried: Tiny Brenda has a stuffy nose and seems lethargic. The doctor, running her hands over Brenda's face and head, quickly decides on two remedies. One is to be brewed into a tea to relieve Brenda's congestion. The other is a mixture of herbs, animal fat and camphor, to be inhaled as a vapor to cure the flu.

     The doctor, whose name is Amakosi, later explains that "flu" is a Western concept. As far as she and Mrs. Makhele are concerned, the treatment wards off "evil spirits."

     Amakosi is a sangoma, a traditional African healer. There are thousands of them in South Africa, most practicing alone in small towns and villages. And then there is this place, KwaZulu Muti, the head office of a 15-clinic group, perhaps the only witch-doctor chain operation in the world.

     "The African needs and wants traditional remedies and potions," says K.M. Naidoo, KwaZulu Muti's 67-year-old owner and a staunch believer in herbal remedies. A one-clinic storefront opened by his grandfather has been transformed into a thriving group specializing in bringing bush medicine to South Africa's cities.

     At his main clinic just two blocks from Johannesburg's stock exchange, Dr. Naidoo picks through bins of herbs and roots, pointing out a vegetable equivalent of cortisone for treating arthritis and an herbal antihistamine. He also says, without batting an eye, that he offers three different love potions, one containing the pulverized hearts of baboons and pigeons.

     "The West may be skeptical," Dr. Naidoo says, "but our clients take us very seriously." Indeed, Mrs. Makhele says she has occasionally gone to conventional health clinics but almost always trusts routine ailments to sangomas. "This is the medicine I grew up with," she says. "I know it works."

     Though South Africa has a sophisticated Western medical system and state-of-the-art hospitals, it also has millions of people who continue to rely on traditional medicine to cure them of everything from fevers to spells. Two-thirds of the patients in a 1990 Durban hospital survey attributed their illnesses to sorcery.

     Dr. Naidoo's clinics are organized along lines that might be the envy of an American HMO. All are staffed with witch doctors (usually men) and sangomas (usually women) who practice the equivalent of medicine and psychology while doubling as drug-makers and pharmacists.

     The clinics also do a brisk business in witch-doctor paraphernalia -- drums, medicine-carriers and ceremonial whips. Sangomas apprentice for up to three years and have rituals -- including sucking blood from sacrificial goats -- that require substantial investments in plants and equipment.

     Far from waning in the face of growing Westernization, the number of South African indigenous healers "has exploded," says Len Holdstock, an Amsterdam professor of clinical psychology who has spent 15 years studying South African tribal medicine. A trade group, calling itself the South African Traditional Healers Council, currently claims to have 1.5 million members.

     Just as Chinese acupuncture has proved its worth, much of the herbal-healing lore of traditional African medicine has demonstrated scientific merit, Dr. Holdstock says. In neighboring Zimbabwe, treatment by certified traditional healers is covered by modern health-insurance policies.

     Using spells and potions to cure everything from impotence to schizophrenia may seem strange to Western medicine, but traditional healers are undeterred. "Sometimes our Western medical practices are completely irrelevant," Dr. Holdstock adds. If someone casts a spell on you, who else but a witch doctor would you ask to undo it?

     That spells opportunity for Dr. Naidoo, a psychologist and anthropologist by training, an entrepreneur at heart. His great-grandparents had practiced healing arts in India before they immigrated to South Africa 110 years ago. As a university student, Dr. Naidoo studied under witch doctors and sangomas of three different tribes. Amakosi, a turban-wearing Xhosa tribeswoman, and her Zulu colleague, Sergeant Mackay, see many of the 700 patients who pass through the main clinic on an average day.

     One day recently, patients came in with an assortment of complaints and spent as little as five rand (about $1.75) for a heartburn remedy and as much as $15.75 for natural antibiotics to treat influenza. They could have spent more: Mix-it-yourself love potions go for $17.50 to $29.75. Wildebeest tails, used in sangoma ceremonies, start at $61.25. Personalized spells, conjured by sangomas or Dr. Naidoo himself and requiring expensive ingredients, can cost hundreds of dollars.

     KwaZulu Muti is no place for the squeamish. Big, open bins hold more than 3,000 herbs and roots, their musky odors mingling with the smell of dried and decaying animal flesh. Countless jars of moldering bones line rows of shelves behind the main counter. On the wall above hang skins and a dried monkey carcass.

     Most of what is sold here is collected in the wild by rural villagers knowledgeable about the needs of sangomas. More and more of KwaZulu Muti's herbs, however, are now cultivated in gardens, largely to avoid criticism that wild, and often rare, herbs are being decimated to meet swelling demand.

     Conservationists leveled similar charges against the traditional-healing trade after discovering that rare eagles and vultures were being poached from South Africa's vast Kruger Park game preserve. Their body parts figure prominently in a good-luck potion and can fetch $100 on the black market -- a lot of money in a country where the average wage of laborers is said to be about $12.50 day.

     Dr. Naidoo says reputable practitioners don't deal in endangered species and insists the animals he uses were hunted legally. And because only bits of animals find their way into spells and potions, they go a long way. "A baboon can last 50 years," he says. Assisting the Lovelorn Dr. Naidoo's observations on this subject were cut short when a patient entered the clinic seeking treatment. Though Dr. Naidoo estimates that 90% of his clients are black, many are Asian. This one happened to be a white man, pacing nervously.

     After a 10-minute private consultation, the patient left. Dr. Naidoo, while declining to name him, was happy to discuss his case in order to make the point that traditional medicine -- even the voodoo side of it -- is gaining cross-cultural appeal.

     The man, recently jilted by his lover, had brought in his lover's picture, along with snippets of his hair, socks and underwear. The man wanted him back and got Dr. Naidoo to take care of that with a spell.

     The prognosis? "I charged him 2,000 rand (about $700) and told him to wait a couple of weeks," says Dr. Naidoo, smiling.

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