The

Extraordinary
Khotso
millionaire medicine
man of Lusikisiki

by Felicity Wood

in collaboration with Michael Lewis

Jacana
Auckland Park, South Africa
2007
Preface
Felicity Wood wrote this book, drawing on the joint endeavours of herself and Michael
Lewis. They have investigated the life of Khotso Sethuntsa for years.

Michael Lewis contributed a considerable quantity of the information upon which this book
draws. In the course of his research, he acquired important documentation and conducted
interviews with key informants who are now deceased.

While the book was being written, Michael Lewis provided guidance, suggestions and
editorial advice.

Both Felicity Wood and Michael Lewis entered the world of Khotso Sethuntsa and
encountered one another in this world. In consequence this book was made possible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

map 1: South Africa and Lesotho

map 2: The Transkei, East Griqualand and Lesotho
list of photographs

Prologue

PART ONE: 1898 - 1932

1. In the Land of the Red Snow

2. Into Nomansland
3. Hunting for Dwarves and Jackals
4. The Snake in a Whirlwind

PART TWO: 1932 - 1960

5. The Wife Below the Water

6. At the White House
7. From Ibangalala to Ukuthwala
8. Greater than God
9. The Kruger Connection
10. Verwoerd's Inyanga
11. Hubris to Nemesis

PART THREE: 1960 - 1971

12. Bantustan Fantasia

13. Anger in the Hills
14. Sex, Drugs and the Broederbond
15. Tsotsis and Treasure
16. King of a Slippery Realm
17. Nkosazana and Bethinja

PART FOUR: 1971 and thereafter

18. The Last Days

19. Third Death and Final Party
20. The Boedel
21. Riches Are Like Mist
22. Life After Death
23. The Last Laugh
Prologue

In 1954, an Eastern Cape journalist wrote of Khotso Sethuntsa: "So prodigious is his wealth
and so strange are the stories told about him that his name is spoken in awe throughout the
territories." 1
The millionaire herbalist Khotso Sethuntsa has been dead for decades, yet in a sense he
remains alive. Many elderly people in Pondoland do not want to talk about him because they
remain in fear of his powers. Sacrifices to invoke his spirit are still made in the yard of his
old headquarters in Lusikisiki, and he continues to visit friends and family members in
dreams. After Khotso's death, one of his bodyguards said: "Khotso knows. He is not around
where you can still see him, but he knows. His spirit is here and more powerful than ever." 2
Khotso's spirit endures, above all in the stories surrounding him, which continue to unfold
to this day. Most people simply refer to Khotso Sethuntsa by his first name, Khotso,
denoting an individual who moved through his remarkable life surrounded by an aura of
mystery and magic that set him apart from all those around him.
At his funeral in 1972, Khotso's spirit seemed very much alive, making fun of any attempts
to explain exactly who he was and unravel some of the riddles surrounding him. Indeed,
more than anything else, the speeches at Khotso's burial served to fuel some of the more
astounding tales about his capabilities. Rather than resolving any of the mysteries, the
addresses delivered by each of the speakers tended to reinforce uncertainty about him.
"Who was he?" asked the master of ceremonies, C.M. Mancotywa, the principal of St
Andrews Secondary School in Lusikisiki, the Transkei town in which Khotso had lived for
the last twelve years of his life. The question resonated throughout the funeral, as
Mancotywa himself, and speaker after speaker who followed him, declared themselves
mystified by Khotso's enigmatic, idiosyncratic character and the extraordinary twists and
turns of his life.
Mancotywa described Khotso as a magnetic personality who drew many different people
to him from nearly all walks of life, from inside and outside Africa.3 The rural poor,
traditional healers and diviners, Broederbonders, the heads of prominent African churches,
white spiritualists, scientists, philosophers, tourists, treasure hunters and entrepreneurs: these
were only some of the people who came thronging to his mansions. Most of all, though,
visitors came to Khotso not as sightseers, but as supplicants, believing that somehow he had
access to astonishing powers that could work miracles in their lives. At the same time he was
feared, precisely because people believed so profoundly in his supernatural capabilities.
There are countless tales of the terror and calamity that Khotso visited on the lives of those
who disobeyed or displeased him.
Khotso remains an enigma: charismatic, controversial and contradictory. He was an
illiterate man, with a limited command of English, who became a millionaire, rising to the
zenith of his wealth and influence during the apartheid era, the origins of his fortune and the
exact nature of his powers surrounded in mystery. Decades after his death, the riddles
surrounding Khotso Sethuntsa persist. This is perhaps one reason why Khotso, who attained
such fame in the course of his career and shaped the lives of so many others in dramatic
ways, still appears to belong to the shifting, hazy terrain of legend, rather than historical
records.
In his funeral oration, Mancotywa spoke of one unanswered question that continues to
hover, fascinatingly unresolved, in the air whenever Khotso's name is invoked today.
"Khotso may be a puzzling character to many of us and the secret of his wealth will not be
known, but his wealth was achieved probably not only through herbs, but through a secret
he died with."4
Stories abounded of the cellars under Khotso's houses crammed with coins, banknotes and
diamonds. But, despite the way he loved publicly flaunting his wealth, Khotso believed that
his fortune was better protected if he retained secrecy around its origins. Some said that this
was also because his wealth had been acquired through dark and dangerous means that
Khotso preferred to keep undisclosed.
Time and time again, accounts of the strange occurrences that took place in Khotso's
presence have been recounted, generating another series of questions in their turn. Was he
really a wielder of the mighty magic that even some of the most pragmatic of his friends and
followers remain convinced he was? Or was his empire based on outrageous fabrications,
unscrupulous manipulation of human weakness and shameless hucksterism?
Stories and riddles, then, are part of Khotso, the man of mystery and magic about whom so
much has been told and so little has been written, apart from newspaper and magazine
articles, often sensationalistic, dealing for the most part with episodes from the latter period
of his life. Khotso loved stories, and he offered different versions of his life history to eager
listeners while increasingly fabulous accounts of his wealth and his powers arose around him.
His history comes to us mainly in the form of tales - some of them even true - and it is into
this labyrinth of narrative that we must venture if we wish to follow the path of his
extraordinary career. Somewhere out there, within all the tales, Khotso Sethuntsa lives on.

Endnotes

Prologue
1 "Transkei's Richest Native: the Incredible Dr Khotso." Daily Dispatch. 17 July 1954.
2 Crous, Con. "Khotso Lives!" Scope. 11 May 1973: 80.
3 Daily Dispatch. 7 August 1972. Natal Witness. 7 August 1972.
4 Cited in Blades, Jack. 1975. Unpublished work on Khotso Sethuntsa. (Hereafter, unless otherwise
indicated, information provided by Blades derives from this source.)