In a powerful address that reframes a deeply entrenched narrative, Dr. Alhaji Sulaiman Kabbah, President of the Sierra Leone Indigenous Traditional Healers Union, has issued a clarion call to recognize traditional healers not as purveyors of harm, but as essential guardians of communal well-being. His declaration—“We are not killers but healers”—serves as a pivotal starting point for a necessary national conversation about the complex, often misunderstood role of indigenous knowledge systems in post-conflict recovery and public health.
Speaking at a stakeholders’ engagement in Freetown, Dr. Kabbah confronted a pervasive stigma head-on. Traditional healers, he argued, are frequently conflated with practitioners of malign occultism, a misconception that obscures their true function as agents of social cohesion and psychological first aid. “Our responsibility has always been to protect lives, restore balance, and help communities live in peace,” he stated, framing their work within a holistic paradigm of health that encompasses physical, spiritual, and social harmony.
To appreciate this claim, one must understand the healer’s role in many West African contexts. They are often the first point of contact for illness, acting as diagnosticians, herbalists, counselors, and mediators. Their authority stems from a deep, culturally specific understanding of the interconnectedness of the individual, the community, and the ancestral or spiritual world. Dismissing them wholesale risks alienating a trusted community pillar and severing a critical link in the healthcare chain.
Dr. Kabbah anchored his defense in a sobering historical account, referencing a period of widespread violence where life was shockingly devalued. “People allegedly being killed for as little as Le10,000 or Le15,000,” he recalled, painting a picture of a society gripped by fear where institutions were suspected of being compromised by harmful occult practices. In this atmosphere of terror, he credits traditional healers with a clandestine, peacekeeping mission: identifying perpetrators and “disarming them of their wizardry gun.”
This evocative phrase requires unpacking. The “wizardry gun” is a potent metaphor for the tools or knowledge believed to be used to inflict supernatural harm. The healer’s counter-action—