In a quiet room in Limpopo, a woman sits cross-legged on a woven mat. Sunlight filters through reed blinds. On a low wooden table in front of her, small clay bowls filled with ash, crushed herbs, and something unexpected, fine gold dust. She dips her fingers into it, mixes it with oil, and gently presses the mixture onto the skin of the man sitting across from her. This isn’t a modern spa treatment. This is a tradition that stretches back generations. Before gold became a symbol of wealth and excess in South Africa, it lived quietly in rituals of healing. Long before Krugerrands or mining strikes, some communities believed gold carried not just monetary value but spiritual and physical power.
While rarely spoken about in mainstream circles, traces of these practices still exist. They’re not found in storefronts or clinics but in homes, in quiet rural spaces, and increasingly, in small wellness studios in Cape Town or Johannesburg, where modern life brushes up against something older. Traditional healers in parts of Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape sometimes used gold dust mixed with medicinal oils, applying it to the skin as part of a cleansing ritual. It wasn’t about beauty. It wasn’t about glowing skin. It was about drawing out “bad energy,” releasing toxins, and reinforcing spiritual protection.
“Gold is something that doesn’t rust or rot,” says Tshepo Maluleke, a cultural researcher from Polokwane. “It’s incorruptible. For many elders, applying it to the body was like putting on invisible armour.” Not every sangoma or healer used gold this way. It was considered rare and special, reserved for certain cases, healing from grief, deep spiritual imbalance, or protecting someone stepping into a new phase of life.
Fast forward to today, and gold-infused skincare is everywhere, face masks, serums, oils promising anti-aging and luxury. But few consumers know these flashy products echo something far older than the latest beauty craze. In a small wellness studio in Melville, Johannesburg, therapist Zanele Khumalo blends modern methods with traditional touches. Her specialty? Gold-leaf body oils inspired by her grandmother’s teachings. “My gogo would crush tiny flakes of gold into oil and rub it on my forehead before I left for school,” she recalls. “She said it would protect me. I didn’t understand back then, but now it feels like part of my work.”
Khumalo doesn’t call herself a sangoma. She isn’t trying to commercialize the ritual. Instead, she uses it as a quiet thread running through her massage and skincare treatments, connecting clients not just to luxury, but to legacy. It’s easy to dismiss gold-infused healing as myth. But modern science offers curious parallels. Gold has been used in medical treatments globally for centuries, think gold salts for rheumatoid arthritis or gold nanoparticles in cutting-edge cancer research.
In skincare, gold particles are said to reduce inflammation and promote skin regeneration. Whether or not these claims hold up in every lab is still debated. But what matters just as much is the cultural weight gold carries in South African healing practices, value, incorruptibility, protection. “Even if the scientific data is inconclusive,” Maluleke says, “for the person receiving the treatment, the belief itself can be powerful medicine.” These stories aren’t found in tourist guides or glossy magazines. They live in passing conversations, in family traditions whispered from grandparent to grandchild.
In KwaZulu-Natal, some fishing communities have been known to mix gold dust with clay, pressing it onto tools or boats as a form of blessing before going to sea. In certain Eastern Cape villages, gold-flecked ointments are prepared for newborns, thought to help strengthen their bond with ancestors. Not every healer today uses real gold. Some use substitutes like brass or mica for affordability. But for those who keep the tradition alive, real gold remains the standard, precious not just for its price, but for its meaning. South Africa has always existed at the intersection of old and new. Gold-infused healing rituals embody that duality perfectly.
In Cape Town’s trendier suburbs, you can now find spas offering “24K Gold Facials,” complete with imported products and designer decor. But a few blocks away, in homes tucked behind markets and shops, elders are still preparing their own mixtures, quietly, without hashtags or price tags. “There’s no need to shout about it,” Khumalo says. “The gold knows its place. It’s not there to show off. It’s there to work.”
Unlike many other cultural practices, gold-infused healing hasn’t been frozen in time. It’s fluid. Some young healers are experimenting with adding gold to soaps, lotions, even incense. Others worry about dilution, losing the original intent behind the ritual in favor of something that feels more Instagram than ancestral.
But at its core, the tradition endures. In skin. In memory. In quiet rooms where sunlight glints off bowls of oil and dust.
It’s a reminder that in South Africa, gold isn’t just something to be mined, worn, or stored in vaults. Sometimes, it lives closer than we think, beneath the skin, woven into healing hands, whispering stories we’re still learning how to tell.
