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It starts with a whisper. A TikTok comment thread filled with emojis and usernames no one uses in real life. “Baba helped me win big.” “I only bet when the stars align now.” “Use green candle, then take odds over 2.5. Trust.” The videos don’t give predictions. Not directly. They show a man in sunglasses lighting incense in front of his cracked iPhone. They show a woman in full sangoma beads holding a betting slip and muttering names of football clubs between prayers. There’s smoke, rhythm, and vague instruction. The hashtags do the rest, #bettingspirit, #lucksystem, #digitalprophet, #winbig.
They call themselves digital sangomas. Not all of them wear the title, but the performance is there. Some wear traditional cloth. Some use voice filters and hide their faces. A few keep it clean and corporate, offering “intuitive betting advice” for followers who DM proof of payment. What they all sell is a kind of belief. Not just in luck, but in forces beyond the odds. In energies. In unseen alignments. In the idea that success isn’t just mathematical, it’s spiritual. And they’re not wrong. Not entirely.
In a world where the algorithm dictates attention and betting odds shift by the second, people are searching for something that feels like control. Something older. Something personal. The idea that there’s still power in ritual. Still meaning in colour, sound, timing. That there’s a way to bend luck without knowing code or tracking data. These TikTok prophets offer that. For a small fee, of course.
Lerato, 25, from Katlehong, has used three of them. She follows six more. She doesn’t bet big, usually R30 or R50 at a time, but she swears the wins come more often when she lights a yellow candle the night before a multi-slip and chants the team names three times. She’s not sure if it works, but she’s also not willing to stop. “The logic never helped me. The stats were confusing. But this… this feels like it respects something else. Something real.”
The videos spread fast. Some get taken down for promoting gambling. Others just disappear, accounts wiped clean after too many refund demands or too much public doubt. But more pop up. Always more. Some offer fixed matches, which is another lie dressed in urgency. Others claim ancestral visions. They show images of ancestors in dreams who whispered tomorrow’s winning team. In the comments, people ask, “Please, baba, what’s tonight’s tip?” “Can I send my birth date for prediction?” “Do you do horses also?”
It’s easy to dismiss it all as absurd. As scam culture repackaged for social media. But underneath the smoke and theatre is a deeper truth. A hunger for meaning in a system that rarely explains itself. Most bettors lose. Most know they will. What the digital sangomas offer isn’t guarantees. It’s story. A way to believe that your small bet carries weight. That there are signs worth watching. That your spirit knows something the numbers don’t.
Musa, 32, used to bet professionally. Numbers, spreadsheets, match statistics. He treated it like trading. Then he lost R80,000 over five months. Said it broke his belief in logic. He doesn’t trust tips anymore, not even his own. Now he follows a woman in Durban who does “spiritual sports readings” on Instagram Live every Thursday. She doesn’t name teams outright. She talks about balance. About harmony. She’ll say, “I see fire in the north, a storm in the west,” and her followers interpret it for themselves. Musa says it helps him slow down. Bet less. Feel more connected. “Even when I lose, I don’t feel cheated. It feels… part of the plan.”
There’s no regulation for any of it. No recourse. No consumer protection when the tip fails or the spell doesn’t land. But few complain. Because complaining would break the illusion. The relationship isn’t transactional in the usual sense, it’s belief-based. The followers aren’t buying accuracy. They’re buying faith. The same way someone buys a candle or a bracelet. It’s not about the thing. It’s about what the thing means.
Most of these prophets don’t last long. A few weeks. A few thousand followers. Then they vanish. The good ones rebrand. New names. New colours. New mysticism. But some stay. The ones who blend performance with sincerity. The ones who say, “Don’t bet too much. Light a candle and sleep well.” The ones who understand that the game is not just about odds, it’s about the feeling of being seen. Even digitally. Even through a blurry screen and generic chant.
There’s no evidence that any of it works. But in taxi ranks and tuckshops, in WhatsApp groups and midweek livestreams, their names get passed around like gospel. “Check this one. He helped me with the Nedbank Cup.” “My girl follows the lady who only speaks Zulu, her tips are blessed.” “Don’t share too much. The spirits don’t like that.”
What’s happening isn’t just about gambling. It’s about connection. In a world where decisions feel outsourced to algorithms and wins feel random, people are carving out their own systems. Their own rituals. Their own maps through uncertainty. The digital sangomas, for all their theatre, are filling a gap no tipster or odds calculator can reach.
They aren’t prophets. They aren’t fakes either. They’re just mirrors. Reflecting back what many already believe deep down, that chance has always been more than math. That maybe, just maybe, the ancestors are watching the game too.
