Meet Annelie de Wet the Sangoma
Through a chance encounter on the street, a white Afrikaans woman discovers she has a calling that takes her deep into the heart of South Africa - and her own psyche.
Annelie de Wet was a ‘corporate princess’ with a good job in e-commerce, friends, a house in the suburbs – a regular life.
Then, 13 years ago, something happened.
Driving in her neighbourhood one day she felt strangely drawn to a woman she saw walking along the road – a black woman carrying lots of parcels. She stopped and offered her a lift. The woman refused, saying she was looking for her children. Annelie drove away. But, for reasons she couldn’t explain, she couldn’t resist going out and finding the woman again. Something she did four more times in that same day. As she drove, she felt something shift deep within her consciousness.
What was happening to her? And why was this woman so important? Desperate, she phoned a friend of hers. The friend said she thought she knew what was going on. Annalie had a calling.
In the fifth edition of Kagiso Media’s First Person, journalist and author Marianne Thamm maps Annelie’s extraordinary journey – through physical hardship and psychological frenzy - into the heart of one of South Africa’s most fundamental - and most enigmatic – traditions: because Annelie – a white Afrikaner – was being called to ukuthwasa – to train to become a sangoma.
“Annalie’s experience is fascinating – both in terms of the course her life has taken and what she has made of it,” says Marianne. “But I know more than one white person who has become a sangoma and I wonder if it’s a way of white South Africans finding a sense of belonging in a country where so much is not fully known to them and from which they are excluded.”
Annalie’s story moves from Rosebank in Cape Town, to Pondoland in the Eastern Cape and Kwathema in Gauteng, and then back to the suburbs.
While her experience is, in many ways, unusual, First Person producer Jayne Morgan believes that her story will strike a chord.
“While only certain people are called to this life, I think Annelie speaks to many of us who are trying to find meaning and authenticity. She talks about getting closer to the earth, about shedding the things you don’t need, about getting back to the physical and embodying your emotions, getting out of your head. It’s something I’ve noticed about all our First Person stories. They are all highly individual and yet each one has something to say that will resonate with nearly everyone.”
Morgan says another exciting thing is that, in this fifth episode, the incidental mbira (African tongue piano) music was specially created for First Person by award-winning multi-instrumentalist, Guy Buttery.
Go to www.firstpersonpod.co.za to discover more about Annelie de Wet’s remarkable transition and for all the other First Person accounts of ordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell.
