WAS CREDO MUTWA A TRAITOR?

He betrayd his sacred tribal oath and was thus cursed.

From Credo Mutwa, Zulu Shaman: The Invention and Appropriation of Indigenous
Authenticity in African Folk Religion : 

In his publications of the 1960s, Credo Mutwa declared himself the guardian of Zulu tribal tradition. Referring to himself as a Zulu witchdoctor, Mutwa related a bewildering array of traditional tales, which Mutwa himself characterized as "a strange mixture of truth and nonsense," showing a remarkable facility of literary invention. Mutwa's presentation drew its authority from a careful balance of transparency and secrecy. On the one hand, Mutwa claimed that he was relating common African folk traditions, the familiar "stories that old men and old women tell to boys and girls seated with open mouths around the spark wreathed fire in the center of the villages in the dark forests and on the aloe scented plains of Africa." If this assertion were true, then the authenticity of these stories could presumably be confirmed by every African man, woman, and child. On the other hand, Mutwa claimed to be relating secrets that were only revealed during the initiation of a witchdoctor. "If ever you pass what you are about to be told today on to the ears of the aliens," his instructor had warned him during his own initiation, "a curse shall fall upon you." By publishing these stories, including a word-for-word account of all the secrets conveyed during his initiation, Credo Mutwa had clearly broken his sacred tribal oath of secrecy. As Mutwa put it, he had made a "terrible choice to betray my High Oath as a Chosen One." Although this betrayal apparently violated the dual source of his authority—shared tradition, secret initiation—Credo Mutwa nevertheless asserted his role as traitor as if it underwrote the authenticity of his accounts of Zulu folk religion (Mutwa 1964: 429, xiii, 455; 1966: vii).