Grace Khoza, a South African spiritual diviner or sangoma, says she knows that South Africa are going to win the rugby World Cup.

"The ancestors say the game is going to be favourable to South Africa," she explained in Zulu, looking a little shaken after her brief conversation with the spirits.

"I see this ball as a shining star, which says that the cup is coming home."

The ball in question has just been commandeered from the training ground of the Springboks, now in Scotland. Transported a few kilometres to a ramshackle three-room house in the township of Soweto, the ball, Khoza said, is now the link between the earthly need to know who's going to win, and the ancestral firmament where all the answers are.