Text: Phila Tyekana. Pictures: Isaac Mofokeng. Location: The Glass Room at Shine studios, Braamfontein. Â This article is from the November 2011 issue of Bona Magazine.
Eight years after she transformed from a care-free 18-year-old to a practising nyanga, Isidingo actress Letoya Mangezi re-emerges as a married mother of three who’s enjoying all that life has to offer.
Letoya’s invited us into her home for our interview. She’s not on set today and it’s the helper’s day off. Having us over and not meeting at a restaurant works best for the actress as she doesn’t want to leave her three children unattended. We arrive to find her busy preparing supper; she’s dressed casually in tights, flip-flops and a loose-fitting top; an image that’s rather different to her on-screen Isidingo character, Ayanda Diale.
In this moment she’s like any other ordinary woman in her ordinary home making her family something to eat. She’s all smiles and chats with us as she busies herself around the kitchen. Although only 27 years old, Letoya has a mature spirit about her, “that’s because of my calling. I carry my ancestors on my back at all times, that’s why there’s an elderly vibe about me,” she explains. The whole family is home; her husband of seven years, Privilege, three kids and even the family’s pet dog, Spot, makes an appearance. The family seems happy. “I don’t know how I do it with three kids, a husband, Isidingo and music performances,” she says as she shakes her head. Both her daughter Nubia (5) and her son Tadiwa (4) are competing for her attention. Then there’s baby Tamuda who’s only seven months old. The kids are bouncy and eager to know who we are and what we are doing with their mom, Letoya calmly explains she’s doing a magazine interview and surprisingly they’re obedient and scatter off to mind their own business.
Do the kids know you’re a famous practising nyanga? We shoot away with questions. “Oh yes they know, how can they not know? I have my muti (herbs) which I buy from a herbal store in Faraday, displayed right here on my wall unit and my ndumba (practice room) is my lounge,” she tells us pointing to her lounge area which, on her off days from Isidingo, is usually transformed into a consulting room for clients. “I set up ucansi (mat), candles, burn impepho (incense) and have whatever I need for the practice.” Her client base is usually older people who hear about her practice by word of mouth.
The young actress and musician has been a nyanga for eight years now and while her 18-year-old peers were readying themselves for university life, she suddenly fell ill with an unexplainable illness in 2003. Although she felt no pain, the strange illness hit her legs and for a period of six months medical practitioners didn’t know what was wrong with her. She was bedridden in hospital and unable to walk. X-rays showed nothing broken or wrong but her legs continued not to have feeling. Attempting all avenues to heal her, Letoya’s father (famous music icon Blondie Makhene) and mother eventually went the traditional route and took her to see a nyanga in Springs, in the East of Johannesburg. “Tradition had never been anything foreign to our family, we’d held traditional ceremonies where we slaughtered and had umqombothi (traditional beer), but the idea of having a nyanga in our immediate family never crossed our minds.
I come from a gifted family and there were several of my relatives who were meant to be traditional healers but never followed through with it. Never had I thought I would be one of the chosen ones,” she reflects about her highly publicised journey into the world of traditional healing.
Springs is where Letoya discovered from a traditional healer that she was called to be a nyanga. It is after hours of praying that it dawned on the healer, whom she refers to as Gogo, that the sickly teenage girl in front of her had a calling.
That day they both shared a vision of Letoya coming out of water covered in beads – a symbol of being summoned by the ancestors to be a traditional healer. The praying continued and soon after that Gogo ordered Letoya to stand up and jump over a fire lit in the room. “At this moment I was looking at her like she was mad, how could I jump over a fire when I couldn’t even walk myself to the bathroom? But something in me said get up and I did, much to my family’s shock.
I jumped over Gogo’s fire and in that instance feeling started coming into my legs again,” Letoya explains calmly where it all began. After that experience, Gogo sat the family down and explained that their daughter had a special calling for her life – to be a nyanga and that for her to start healing her legs she had to accept her fate and agree to ukuthwasa (traditional healer initiation).
She confesses that at first her acceptance to be a nyanga was only to end her misery and be able to walk again; she didn’t think about the future consequences of her decision.
Nonetheless, after two months of being healed and because she’d ‘accepted’ being a healer, initiation had to happen and that’s when reality struck.
“I lasted a month in initiation school, I was still a child and felt I wasn’t ready for such a huge role. I missed my family and my comfortable life at home, so I left.
When you thwasa you need to be very humble as you are stripped of all the outer materials and are forced to acknowledge your inner spiritual core. At that time I was caught up in the glitz and glam of the media industry; presenting Channel O and pursuing a music career. I had to let go of all of that, I just wasn’t ready.”
After leaving initiation school, Idols contacted her and together with actor Colin Moss she presented the show. Guilt took over and after a year on Idols she went back to initiation school. “I now know that Idols came into my life for a reason, the ancestors brought it for me to gather enough money to continue with initiation.”
Privilege was there during one of the lowest yet empowering times. I think he fell in love with me because of my calling really.
In the modern world we now live in, being a traditional healer is slowly becoming something that belongs to past generations, but for the likes of Letoya it fits in comfortably in her daily life. “I’m still very human, being an inyanga doesn’t mean I’m superhuman. Like everybody else, I love shopping, looking good, I cry and I’m weak to certain things. I’m set apart from the norm because I’m able to tap into the energies surrounding us in order to heal people both spiritually and physically through my ancestors,” she says of how modern living meets tradition in her life.
Letoya’s husband Privilege has been with her since her days of starting initiation. He never ran away from her calling and was there offering his friendship when none of her friends stuck around. “I met Priv, while working at Channel O, he’d accompanied former rapper Mischief for an interview. We became friends and when I had to go into initiation, he was there all along offering his support and even coming to the ceremonies that were held. It’s then that I realised I liked him, he was there during one of the lowest yet empowering times of my life which was initiation. I think he fell in love with me because of my calling really,” she confesses.
There were no fancy proposals when Privilege asked for her hand in marriage, Letoya reveals. They’d had talks about getting married a year before eventually tying the knot in 2005. Their white wedding was also simple; they signed at the Magistrate’s Court and had an intimate lunch with their close friends and family at her father’s house.
Their traditional wedding, however, was out of the ordinary. Because Letoya was a nyanga, it was vital for both hers and Privilege’s ancestors to be at peace with each other and happy about their marriage. For a nyanga to get married, a certain ritual had to be carried out: A live goat is placed on the couple’s bed and put between them while the family and other traditional healers dance and sing outside. If the goat is quiet and peaceful then it’s a symbol of peace between the couple’s ancestors. If the goat is fussy then the ancestors are at war and aren’t satisfied with the couple’s union. Needless to say, Letoya’s goat was peaceful.
She’s grateful her in-laws accepted her calling although they’re staunch Jehovah’s Witnesses. “They never made me feel like an outsider in their family. My mother-in-law is Zimbabwean but now lives in the UK,” she says.
The mention of Privilege’s mother stirs up memories of her own mom, Letoya admits. Her mother, Agnes Makhene, died from a stroke in 2007. Letoya is emotional now as she speaks of her mother’s sudden death at the age of 42.
“She’d been sickly after a car accident she was in with my father. The first time she had a stroke, things were normal and she came to us while we were watching TV in the lounge, complaining about having a headache. She went upstairs to lie down and immediately had a stroke. While in hospital, she suffered another stroke and passed away two weeks later.”
As a mother of three, Letoya wants to follow in her late mother’s footsteps of providing love and warmth in the home. Motherhood and marriage were always part of her plan Letoya confides, “Even as a teen, I dreamt of having kids and plenty of them too – with the right guy of course.
We weren’t allowed to date until we were 18 at home. I’d secretly date but it was never anything serious. Priv was really my first true love.”
The actress fell pregnant a month after her wedding, a blessing given by God and her ancestors at the right time as she’d been trying to conceive the year before without any success. Her second-born, Tadiwa, was planned soon after Nubia was born.
Their last-born was the couple’s only surprise baby. With Nubia, she admits, she was a little inexperienced and had bouts of overwhelming moments. Parenting seven-month-old Tamuda, who is the last-born is easier because she’s calmer in her role as a mom.
Letoya’s been off our screens for four years now that she’s returned with her role as Ayanda Diale on Isidingo. Wondering how she balances her two worlds of traditional healing and acting, she assures us that the two don’t really clash. “I think my ancestors know I was born to be an entertainer and would never want to take that away from me. The elder traditional healers respect my work as well and have no objections about what I do,” she tells us.
Before leaving home however, Letoya does a ritual called ukuphahla where she burns incense and inhales snyf (snuff powder), connecting to amadlozi and letting them know where she is going so that they are at peace and don’t feel the need to appear to her while she’s in public. Nonetheless, the ancestors have their moments; “sometimes I’ll let out an unexpected burp during recording,” she reveals. When she is filled with the spirit of the elders she needs to release it, hence the burping.
“On set, of course, the other races and the younger generation don’t understand such moments, but the older people know and silently nod in acknowledgement of what is going on,” Letoya adds. She quickly clarifies that she doesn’t expect to be treated formally by people who she works with or meets. “With respect and acknowledgement, like anyone else, is how I want to be treated by others. Being inyanga doesn’t set me apart but it does make me extraordinary because I am filled with love for all those around me,” she ends off.
The Glass Room at Shine studios in Braamfontein has two television studios, a photography studio, as well as support service and office areas.
For more info, please contact Tshidi on 011 242 3311
or visit their website www. shinecreativeservices.com.
