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Mbeki's Darkest Hour: sangoma predicted his ouster in 1999
VISIONS: South African sanusi/sangoma Credo Mutwa
In 1999, former South African President Thabo Mbeki was just assuming his reigns of power but one man with a gift of foretelling the future -- sanusi Credo Mutwa -- predicted he would not see out his term in office. His prophecy came to pass in September this year when Mbeki was asked to step down by the ruling ANC. Mutwa also predicted the great energy crisis and power cuts that swept through southern Africa this year. New Zimbabwe.com has exclusive access to the archived Drum Magazine where Mutwa made his predictions. Here is the full story as it appeared in the magazine's July 1, 1999, issue:
The last time sanusi Credo Mutwa felt the ‘great sadness’ was just before Chris Hani died. Before that, it had been just before Verwoerd was assassinated; and even earlier, when US President John F Kennedy was shot. Now he’s feeling it again…
By Don Makatile
HE LOOKS troubled as he shifts his weight in his chair and stares into the distance. Things won’t be easy for Mbeki, he says. He’ll need all his leadership skills to overcome the problems that lie ahead.
South Africa will experience a major electricity failure, the right wing will rise again and three great men will be in extreme danger. The new president may not last his full term in office…
These chilling predictions come from 78-year-old poet, author, sanusi and cultural guru Credo Mutwa, now in hiding because of threats to his life. In the past he’s been called senile or dismissed as a prophet of doom, but he knows he is right – as he was before.
He’s recently been overcome by a feeling of great sadness and loss. It’s a time he calls “when the sun marries the moon”, which usually precedes some disaster or other.
During one such period he wrote a poem, The Bloodstained Flag. Shortly afterwards, US President John F Kennedy was gunned down. During another such period, he warned apartheid architect HF Verwoerd that he saw a bayonet hanging over his head.
Verwoerd dismissed the vision as nonsense, saying only blacks died by knives. Shortly afterwards he was fatally stabbed in parliament.
After another such period Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed. Even later, he told another sangoma: “A great African is going to die.” The date was April 10, 1994 – the day Chris Hani was assassinated.
“People don’t like what I say but I must tell the truth the way I see it,” says Credo, who’s ever mindful of fate that befell Nontetho, a 1930s prophetess. She was locked up in a Pretoria mental hospital where she eventually died, a sad, lonely old woman.
“She was not mad,” says Credo. “This is the same woman who foresaw a great black leader who would rule over us a short period. She called the leader Mandla.”
Could she have referred to Mandela who, after 27 years in prison, led the nation for only five?
Then there was Thokozile Magwaza, who predicted violence in Richmond, Shobashobane and many other KwaZulu-Natal trouble spots long before it became front page news.
Magwaza had warned King Cyprian, current monarch Zwelithini’s father and predecessor, about looming violence amond his subjects. “But she was ridiculed from one side of Zululand to the other,” says Credo.
He believes people who can see into the future are blessed with a God-given talent and not possessed of some supernatural power.
And their predictions are so often right. Like those of his partner, Mama Nobela, who saw Princess Diana’s death in her dreams.
She woke and uttered in Ndebele: “The woman of the white people is dead.” Hours later, the world was shocked to hear Diana had been killed in a car crash in Paris.
What does Credo predict for the Thabo Mbeki years?
“He will be remembered by coming generations for having ruled during a particularly turbulent part of our country’s history,” he says. “He will have to use all his wisdom, sometimes his ruthlessness, to deal with what is coming.”
Although right-wing organisations such as the Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging (AWB) have fallen silent, Credo warns of “the loud noise the ultra-right is going to make”.
And when they begin to make noises, he says, it will be with the help of disoriented blacks, because “they are too cowardly to act on their own”.
Once Credo Mutwa is speaking it’s hard to interrupt. He continues with his opinion of the defunct Broederbond, a group of well-placed Afrikaners who played a vital role in oppressing blacks during the apartheid years.
“Organisations like those, where members take an oath over a coffin, do not cease to exist,” he says. “They just operate from behind the scenes.”
To illustrate this, he says incidents such as those at Vryburg High School, where parents of black and white students came to blows, are evidence of secret Broederbond activity.
“People are going to be arrested very soon in South Africa,” says Credo.
“We are a newly discovered territory for drug cartels who use our country as a channel for their goods. Two prominent men, very wealthy, are going to be exposed as drug lords. One is going to be arrested here, the other in Lesotho.”
Then, shaking his head worriedly, the prophet continues: “Around early 2000, people will lose electricity, not only in South Africa. Criminals will then have breakfast!
“As we speak, three great people are in danger. I won’t say who they are but suffice to say one is white, and two are black. One is in political trouble, the other for telling the truth; the last will be involved in a terrible accident.”
Can’t he warn them?
No, says Credo, because since the days of Verwoerd nobody has listened to his warnings – “people have this inexplicable paranoia about the things I say”.
But he feels he has to appeal to politicians to put ambition aside and work together for the good of the country. “I see a dispute within the ruling party and splinter groups forming as a result,” he says.
Then he drops his bombshell: “I cannot see the whole of Mbeki’s term of office. I don’t know why, maybe I won’t live long enough to see the rest of it.”
But it is not all bad news. We’ll make great progress in the war against Aids, and women parliamentarians – among them Winnie Madikizela-Mandela will play a major role.
He also predicts political parties will split to join ranks with the ANC. “The ANC will create a big change in the country, before July next year. There will be jobs, but not many; just enough to ease unemployment strain.
“I see Mbeki battling a buffalo. Yes, he won the battle. He was on the ground but he won it. The buffalo here is a problem that must be mastered quickly.
“A Moses – Mandela – has brought us to the promised land. It’s now up to Aaron – Mbeki – to lead us forward. That’s all I am prepared to say.”
God has really blessed us, he says, by giving us two great men at the same time.
People will always be sceptical about those who claim to be able to see into the future but, to prove how short-sighted this can be, Credo tells a story about his grandfather.
Apparently his grandfather used to lead a dance – Inkulisela – in which the people of his village would gather to dance around their crops – pumpkins, cabbage, potatoes and so on.
They believed the dance would encourage their crops to grow even better, but a missionary stationed at their village, Rev Hudnutt, threatened to have Credo’s grandfather kicked out if he didn’t stop his “heathen practices”. The dance was stopped, and the crops suffered.
Years later, scientists suggested that plants have feelings and that it isn’t insane to talk to them or dance around them, to encourage growth.
Credo Mutwa may
be in ill health and may not always be right, but can we afford not
to heed his warnings? Can SA afford to be a nation of Hudnutts? - Drum
Magazine, July 1, 1999
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