Behind the Healer’s Many Faces Was a Man in Ruins

By Gogo Bathini Mbatha

For years, people entrusted their lives, their fears and their deepest troubles to a man who did not exist.

They knew him as Gogo Bathini Mbatha, a traditional healer. They brought him their sick children, their troubled marriages, their fears of whatever dark forces were stalking them. They came carrying burdens they could no longer bear, laid them at his feet and trusted him to know what to do. He received them all. He listened, counselled, performed his duties and wore the authority of a man who appeared to have his own life firmly under control.

What they did not know was that the man they trusted was drowning.

Some knew I drank. What they did not understand was the scale of it. I was not a man who occasionally enjoyed a drink. I was a full-time, proud alcoholic—a devoted servant of the bottle. Alcohol was not an occasional visitor in my life. It had moved in, taken over the furniture and made itself comfortable. My stupidity rode every wave of that ocean, and I was going under while the world continued to call me the lifeguard.

There were mornings when I stood before the mirror, staring at the stranger looking back at me. Who are you, for real? I would ask. The man in the glass never answered. He watched me dress, straighten my collar and prepare to go out and play another role. Another day, another performance, another chance to convince the world that I was the man it believed me to be.

I remember preparing for the disciplinary hearing of a staff member whose Mondays I was forever making miserable. Her offence? She drank.

Look at that arrangement properly. I was sitting in judgement of somebody for doing precisely what I was doing, and I could taste last night on my own tongue while I read out her sins. I had become so comfortable with my hypocrisy that I could not even see it. I arrived wearing my Owner Cap, and that cap came with its own little kingdom. It made me feel powerful, untouchable, answerable to nobody. I fired her on the spot.

She took me to the CCMA, and I walked into that case drunk as well. She did not even bother to show up. That was all the encouragement my ego needed. It swelled like a drunk’s belly, and I talked and talked, basking in the satisfaction of a victory I had already awarded myself. I mistook the sound of my own voice for good judgement. I was a man who could not govern himself, presiding over the supposed misconduct of another human being.

Then there were the people who knew me as a church mouse. With them, my voice softened. I was devout, measured and deeply interested in the affairs of the church. We discussed church politics, conferences and the role the church had played in carrying me through difficult times. I could speak about grace with a steady voice and an ease that would have impressed anybody listening, and while I spoke I almost believed myself. They never smelled the alcohol on me. They never saw what was happening behind the carefully arranged exterior. They shook hands with a man who did not exist, and I allowed them to walk away believing they had met him.

I was once invited to a wedding to guide the newlyweds into the realities of married life. Imagine the absurdity of it: a drunk man standing before two young people, dispensing wisdom about building a home, sustaining a relationship and surviving the storms of marriage. I was also appointed as the lobola negotiator for the groom’s family. Both families liked me. They trusted me. They had every reason to believe they were dealing with a man who knew what he was doing.

What they did not know was that I had been drunk from the very first day we met, through every round of negotiations and right up to the wedding day. I nearly ruined that wedding. Looking back, I am grateful that I was given only one task for that big day. Anything more, and the whole performance would have come apart in front of both families. I had done nothing to deserve that mercy.

There is a particular loneliness in performing respectability for a living. I would leave a meeting with the handshakes still warm on my palm, drive home with the windows down to chase the cologne out of the car, and pour the first drink before I had taken off my shoes. Respectability was a coat I hung on the back of the door each night. I had become so practised at wearing it that I could move between my different worlds without appearing to notice the contradictions. I was the traditional healer, the churchman, the employer, the marriage adviser and the respected negotiator. Each came with its own audience, its own expectations and its own version of me.

And I played every part.

One day, I was summoned to a tribunal court to offer insight in my capacity as a traditional healer. By the time I arrived, my body was betraying me. Sweat streamed down my face and soaked through my collar. I could feel it running down my back. My body was fighting to push out what I had poured into it, while I struggled to look like a man whose authority was beyond question.

The Chief looked at me.

“Are you OK, Gogo Bathini Mbatha?”

“Not at all, Nkosi,” I replied. “This is what I am talking about. The witchcraft works, and now it is attacking me.”

It was confirmed that what I said was true. And it was true. But I was also drunk.

That is how it worked. The truth sat right beside the lie, and I was so lost in my own deception that I could no longer tell which of them I was holding. I had an explanation for everything, even when I was the very thing that needed explaining.

I do not know whether it was luck or something older looking after me, but invitations to important meetings, sometimes involving very high-profile people, always arrived in good time. That gave me the chance to prepare. And prepare I did.

I planned which alcohol I would drink that day. I planned which sweets would drown the smell. I planned which cologne would sit on top of the sweets and complete the disguise.

Lalela, listen to me. I planned rubbish. I ran an entire operation. There was calculation and attention to detail. I could anticipate the needs of a meeting, the expectations of the people attending and the chance that somebody might catch the scent of what I was hiding. I applied my intelligence to deceiving people about the one thing that was destroying me. I had become an expert at managing appearances and hopeless at managing myself.

I had so many characters that the people who knew me could each defend the version they had met. They would describe me so differently that you would think they were talking about ten different men. And none of them was necessarily lying. They had all met somebody real. They had just never met the whole man.

Then came the river.

I had to take one of my trainees, a thwasa, to the river for cleansing. I understood the importance of that ceremony. I knew its significance, the responsibilities attached to it and the trust that came with guiding somebody through such a sacred part of their journey.

And I was drunk.

When we arrived, the others were singing. The drums were beating, and their rhythm carried a melody that seemed to work its way into my chest. The singing, the water and the atmosphere pulled at something inside me. I walked deeper into the river, the water climbing my knees, my waist, my ribs, carrying the authority of a traditional healer and the confidence of a man who was supposed to know the way.

But I could not swim well enough to save my own life.

A young woman had entrusted her life to me. Her parents had entrusted their honest child to my care, believing I was capable of guiding and protecting her. Yet there I was, in the very place where I was supposed to lead her through a sacred ceremony, struggling against a force I could neither control nor overcome.

The river did not recognise my title. It did not care how many people called me Gogo Bathini Mbatha, how many meetings I had attended or how many people had sat before me seeking answers. It had no interest in my reputation, my standing or the carefully constructed character I had spent years presenting to the world.

The water was taking us both.

I remember the panic, the struggle and the terrible realisation that I might not make it out. The current was stronger than I was. I swallowed so much water that I vomited everything I had drunk that day. The river seemed determined to empty me of what I had poured into myself. But even that violent encounter with the consequences of my drinking was not enough to change me.

Strangers who happened to be at the river came to our rescue. They pulled us out of the water and onto the bank, saving our lives.

I cannot tell you what it is to kneel on that bank, shaking, and understand that the people who should have been looking to you for protection were kept alive by strangers. I had gone there as the guide. I had entered the water as the healer. Yet I was among those who needed rescuing.

And in that water, with death suddenly close enough to touch, I found myself quoting the Bible. Joshua 4:23. I remembered how the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan until the Israelites had crossed, just as He had done at the Red Sea.

I am not what you would call a devout Christian. I had worn my faith to church like a good suit, but in that water it was the only thing I reached for.

I was asking for the same intervention. I was pleading for the waters to make way, for a passage through the danger, for a miracle that would allow us to live.

I was begging for a miracle I had done nothing to deserve.

That river should have been the end of the man I had been pretending to be. It had exposed me in a way no mirror, disciplinary hearing, church gathering or high-profile meeting ever could. There was no cologne to cover the smell, no sweets to disguise the evidence, no Owner Cap to make me feel powerful and no carefully rehearsed explanation that could negotiate with the current.

There was only a drunk man in the water, a young woman whose life had been placed in his hands and a group of strangers who had to save them both.

You would think that such an encounter would change everything.

It did not.

When we got home, there was no reckoning, no real shame and no attempt to put right what had happened. There was no solemn promise that I would never put another human being in such danger. There was no great awakening. I went back to drinking as though the river had been an inconvenience, an unfortunate interruption in an otherwise ordinary day.

I picked up where I had left off.

That is perhaps the most frightening thing about alcoholism. You can come face to face with your own death, endanger somebody else’s life, be pulled from the water by people who owe you nothing, and still return to the very thing that nearly killed you. The danger does not always announce itself with a dramatic collapse. Sometimes it waits patiently for you to get home, dry your clothes and resume your routine.

For years, I had been showing people how to cross troubled waters while drowning in my own.

I was the lifeguard who could not swim.

Gogo Bathini Mbatha: Founder of Sober Beings/ Traditional Healer/ Researcher/ Spiritual Educator