A soothsayer in South Africa has predicted a win for Cameroon ahead of the 2017 AFCON semi final clash between Ghana and Cameroon.

Eighty-five-year-old Nozo Zintoyinto from the Xhosa ethnic group has been in the business for sixty years and  insists that "the shells are never wrong"

She  strings white beads around her wrinkled neck, head and wrists, sitting on a cement floor in a corner of a room.

Zintoyinto explains that a deceased ancestor appeared to her in a dream when she was a teenager and “called” on her to be a sangoma.

Then a senior traditional healer trained her to interpret “signs from the spirits,” to heal people and also to forecast the future. Zintoyinto’s services are not free and, lately, she says, business is good.

“I don’t know much about soccer. But since this AFCON thing started, lots of men have been coming to me. They ask me to predict the results of games. Then they go to the betting places to put bets on the teams I think will be the winners.” Zintoyinto shakes a handful of seashells and throws them on an orange blanket on the floor.

According to her, the shells had revealed to her even before the start of the tournament that Ivory Coast Senegal will not do well and one of her clients had won big money on the back of that particular prediction.

“The shells told me before the AFCON competition that Ivory Coast and Senegal would not do well. I told this to one of my clients who then put one hundred rand (about $7.00) each on Ivory Coast and Senegal being knocked out. That is what happened so the man, he won a lot of money.”

She says Cameroon will face Egypt in the final but refuses to disclose the eventual winner as it is "too far in the future"

She quickly adds that she sometimes interprets the shells wrongly.

"But sometimes I must admit I don’t interpret the shells 100 percent right. Because when I’m busy with the shells, the ancestors are making a lot of noise in my mind,”

Ghana’s Black Stars, will face off against Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions. Both are four-time competition winners, but soccer analysts have labeled Cameroon the underdogs. “The ancestors are shouting a lot. They are disagreeing about this match. But most are telling me Cameroon will win,” she insists.

By Musah Abelyire/ghanaguardian.com