Formally Recognised Alongside Doctors, by Law

South Africa's Traditional Health Practitioners Act, passed in 2007 and brought into fuller operation in the years following, formally recognises sangomas and other traditional healers as a distinct category of health practitioner alongside registered medical doctors, establishing an official council intended to register practitioners, set standards and, in principle, issue medical certificates recognised for purposes such as sick leave, a level of state recognition few other traditional healing systems in Africa have achieved in law.

Implementation has been slower and more contested than the statute itself suggests, with disputes over how to verify a genuinely trained and called sangoma for registration purposes, and continuing tension between traditional healing and the biomedical health system over specific issues such as the treatment of HIV and other conditions where public health authorities have raised safety concerns about herbal treatments substituting for proven medical care. The law nonetheless marks a rare instance of a government formally writing traditional diviner-healers into its official health system rather than treating the practice as merely tolerated or entirely outside state structures.