Lungiswa Nonkwelo pictured here at the Cannabis Expo in Gauteng in May 2026.
Lungiswa Nonkwelo (67) used her cancer diagnosis and illness as a point of traditional medicine discovery.
Against professional advice, she weaned herself off chemotherapy, turned to herbal remedies, and thus began her journey to self-medication. She found she could better manage her illness and in the process bounced back from Stage 3 cancer. Doctors initially gave her six months to live. Six months have now turned to 26 years and counting.
Her story began in 2001, her annus horribilis. Both her personal life and physical health were in turmoil. “I said to the oncologist, ‘look, my children are young and I’ve just gone through a divorce’. Something had to give.” She had no choice but to defy both the divorce and dread prognosis.
Turning to Herbs Provided Relief
“I did chemo. I was on tamoxifen treatment. It was tough. The trauma was too much,” she recounts. “That’s when I said, ‘let me take another route they didn’t take’. I turned to herbs. I found myself getting relief.”
Doctors cited her patrilineal cancer history as a factor for the grim prognosis. “Because of my family history my chance was slim. The cancer had started to mestasize. They had to remove my left breast.”
Nonkwelo had by then lost her father, uncle and aunt to the disease. Her father was a layman and she could somehow absorb the loss. But she was beside herself trying to understand that her medical doctor uncle and her aunt, a matron at Mthatha General Hospital, became routine victims.
“They were medical professionals through and through,” she recites. Because these family members were, in her view, the least likely candidates to succumb to the debilitating disease, she was forced to reconsider her attitude to conventional treatment.
Worse, the cancer-woven familial tragedy did not stop there. Just last year, her cousin, the renowned University of Johannesburg researcher Dr Carol Nonkwelo, her doctor uncle’s daughter, also died of cancer, aged 62. She had trained as a pharmacist. “I have lost three medical professional family members to cancer. It’s unimaginable,” Nonkwelo reflects.
And then there was Cannabis
In between resisting doctors’ dire predictions by fighting the disease her own way and being a businesswoman for the next decade, Nonkwelo stumbled upon another pain relief discovery. Cannabis was that source of pain management this time. And like with most of her story, this also came in the most unlikely of fashions: a business trip to the Netherlands in 2013.
“I had a contract with Transnet to clean boats so I needed to learn how they do it. They do it very well in the Netherlands. While there, my colleagues went to an Amsterdam club where they discovered Port St. Jones weed. We were shocked that our very own cannabis was consumed in the Netherlands. I went to that club the following day. That was my first encounter with cannabis. Back at the hotel, I looked in the mirror to see if I had changed,” Nonkwelo recalls, fighting guffaws. “I hadn’t. I woke up feeling fine the next morning.”
That incident was not only instrumental to her current state of relatively good health but also served as an impetus to look even further. Today, Nonkwelo is an apostle for integrative health, whereby physical exercise, stress management and social support are deemed essential complementary long-term wellness safeguards.
As it turned out, accepting her colleagues’ challenge to try pot opened her eyes to a treatment modality she previously had not considered. However, procuring cannabis pre-decriminalisation was not easy.
Nor have things got any better. Trade regulations are a spectacular muddle, the reason veteran cannabis activist and Cannabis Development Council of South Africa (CDCSA) Chairperson Ras Gareth Prince has gone back to court to attempt to force government to come good on most of its liberalisation promises. “When I landed back home I said to people, ‘if you’re not going to give me intsango (cannabis), it’s you who are going to kill me not intsango’.”
This was the backdrop against which she started to grow her own crop in 2013. She became a farmer and processor both.“ I used to process about 20 litres at a time for my personal needs. That would last me for a while.” Fellow villagers in her Libode locale took a strong liking to her medicine, in which cannabis was but one ingredient. This is how her increasingly popular formula, Defender herbal supplement, was born and came into greater acceptance.
The mixture is available in Port Elizabeth, Mthatha, Libode, Tsolo, Kempton Park and at select stores in the Spar group, among others.
“It never entered my mind I’d be doing this as a business,” she gleefully ponders.
‘Your hormones are like your local government”
Nonkwelo became a traditional healer six years ago, fulfilling a years’ long prophecy. The watershed moment was her 60th birthday celebrations. While sharing her survival story, among the guests was an older woman who encouraged her to share her herbal medicines discoveries with the world. Thus started the traditional healer chapter. She describes it as a calling where ancestral intercession is key to herbal selection and healing.
To live as an authentic sangoma meant decamping to the rural Libode home she grew up in, as per her late mother’s advice – shared in a dream. Gone was the once-famous city businesswoman (a regional 2008 Business Legend Award is testament to that). She traded coastal suburb-living in Gonubie, where “when I’m in my room, I’d watch dolphins going up and down”, for rural village retreat.
But the cancer diagnosis was not her first nor would it be her last medical scare. That started with a TB diagnosis at 28 years. Again, Nonkwelo attributes her ancestors’ influence for her recovery. Years later it would seem getting into the grip of cancer was the end and worst of her medical travails, except it was not. Another devastating condition was waiting in the wings and struckfive years later. This time it was fibrosis. She again resisted orthodoxy. She lied to the consulting doctors that she would return for the required removal of her uterus. She never did. “I was bleeding like hell. I successfully treated myself,” she states placidly.
Cannabiz Africa met Nonkwelo at Cannabis Expo 2026, held in Sandton from 29-31 May. She looked hearty and hale. Her Defender herbal medicine has to date proved the panacea for all her ills.
“My gout is gone, my abnormal blood pressure, my ulcers,” she says. Although she cannot divulge her exact ingredients, aloe ferox, artemisia afra, African sage, honeybush, honey and rosemary are among well-known Eastern Cape natural medicines. However, Defender herbal supplement is processed with ginger, garlic, mya, peppers. It is soya and dairy-free with no preservatives.”
Says Nonkwelo: “Your hormones are like your local government. You just need to make the hormones perform perfectly. Then the whole system works because the hormones are balanced. ”Among the volunteered testimonials she has received is one from a user professing Defender successfully treated their vitiligo.
Nonkwelo laments her late cousin Carol did not want to try her patented mixture, which, as she owns up, does not carry scientific certification. Its touted benefits include boosting the immune system, improving blood circulation and (Donald Trump could do well to listen) removing blemishes. It is recommended for other chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and obesity on a long list, including appetite loss and backache.
Nonkwelo believes she would be no more by now, had she remained in the western medicine model care. “Comparing myself with the other group, the fellow cancer patients I encountered during my treatment, I could see I was doing better than them. During counselling you’re told you must not use anything else,” she says.
While she looks back on her unbelievable journey, Nonkwelo is working to support local women farmers, volunteering as a secretary for Women in Agriculture and Rural Development (WARD)in Libode.
She is busy with incubating the farmers, including through trying to procure them supply contracts at local establishments and setting up a training centre. “If you want to grow the economy, you must support the local economy,” she proffers.
For now, the cancer just has to wait, it seems.
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