Cure sought for Cape muti plant pillage
Uncontrolled harvest of wild plants and herbs is getting out of control, experts warn
Cape Town needs healing to maintain its position as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
Harvesters of medicinal plants are plundering its wild areas to maintain an illicit economy estimated to be worth almost R3billion a year.
About half of South Africans use wildharvested medicines, gobbling up to 20 000 tons of botanical material a year, according to new research.
“Wild-harvested medicines form part of the historical and contemporary fabric of South African society, and are used by at least 27 million consumers in a largely complementary manner to Western medicine,” says a new paper in the South African Journal of Science.
“For many South Africans, plant medicines are sought as stabilisers and proactive responses to the precarities and uncertainties of everyday life: the need to secure employment, attract a potential partner or realign one’s conduct in relation to past generations of family.
“Contemporary urban citizens with familial histories of medicinal plant use continue to draw on these practices holistically to help promote their wellbeing and greater future prosperity, by cleansing themselves, family members and their immediate surroundings.”
Cape Town has 24 formally protected conservation areas, representing about 18% of South Africa’s plant diversity, according to the research published last month.
Herbal healing
Academics led by Leif Petersen, of the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation and the University of the Western Cape, polled 58 traditional healers, including Rastafarians and sangomas, to understand what lies behind the illicit activity in Cape Town’s protected areas.
“Resource-harvester motivations primarily link to local economic survival, healthcare and cultural links to particular resources and practise ‘access for all’ outlooks and wholesale profit-seeking perspectives,” the research found.
“Over 90% of respondents stated that they conducted wild-resource harvesting primarily as an economic survival strategy.”
Many of the healers interviewed by the research team said the “formal, legalistic and protection-driven” attitude to conservation was “a middle-class interpretation of how nature should be maintained”.
Said Petersen: “This was considered culturally insensitive and ignorant of their lived reality of social and economic marginalisation.”
The research suggested various ways to counter the plundering including stricter maintenance of protected areas’ boundaries, allowing harvests under an “open-access” regime and even establishing plantations of culturally important species.
Traditional healer Nomnyamazana Maliti, 65, who plies her trade in Nyanga after answering a calling to “heal the nation” at the age of 10, resents bureaucratic interference in her work.
“Who owns the medicine?” she said. “I treat stroke, epilepsy, stomach aches and cancer with the medicines provided to us by God. I don’t just wake up and walk into the forest and dig up plants, I see them in my dreams.”
She harvests her medicine all over the country, but in Cape Town she exploits Table Mountain National Park and the Tygerberg area.
Fynbos free-for-all
Mxolisi Ketso, who operates from Marcus Garvey Rastafarian village, said he had practised traditional healing from the age of 16. Bellville and various Cape Town plains are his hunting ground.
“I believe plants are living organisms just like you,” he said. “They need to be conserved in order for them to help future generations. I welcome these initiatives.”
Loren George, spokeswoman for CapeNature, said medicinal species especially susceptible to illegal harvesting include wild garlic, asparagus and buchu.
“CapeNature engages with all stakeholders involved in harvesting plant life including traditional healers, initiation forums, Rastafarians and youth organisations,” she said.
Aldred Kaffoen, secretary of a Western Cape steering committee for the People and Parks Programme run by the Department of Environmental Affairs, said there was little control over protected sites.
Kaffoen, a Rastafarian, said: “You see many people selling the medicines in Cape Town and they don’t have access permits or necessary papers to harvest these plants. They are not participants in any conservation initiatives. It’s a free-for-all.”
I treat stroke, epilepsy and cancer with the medicines provided by God Nomnyamazana Maliti Traditional healer