Jul-10BIOCULTURAL PROTOCOL
Jul. 12
community education or establishing closer local controls.
Now that we are clear about the procedures for accessing plants from Mariepskop, we want to be
recognized by the Department of Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries as both contributing to and
benefiting from the region’s biodiversity and work with the Department to establish a system that
facilitates our access to the resources under its management. We call on the DAFF to instigate a
process towards establishing such a collaborative partnership, and to explore the establishment of a
medicinal plants conservation and development area on Mariepskop to increase the in situ
cultivation of the most important medicinal plants.
We also want to evaluate how to replicate successful community run medicinal plants nurseries in
the area, and seek the K2C Biosphere Committee’s assistance in any future projects of this kind. We
are considering beginning discussions with local traditional authorities as well as with the
Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency to evaluate whether we could have some land set aside for
our purposes.
We call on: the K2C Biosphere Committee and the MTPA to work with us to identify new areas
which we could access or that could be set aside for the purpose of conserving and sustainably using
medicinal plants.
We also call on the Department of Health and Social Development to speed up its registration
process to enable us to carry cards that certify us as traditional health practitioners. We feel that
being recognized at the national level will assist us in our local challenges.
Protecting and sharing our traditional knowledge: respecting our
prior informed consent
To ensure that our traditional knowledge is protected, we require people who want to access our
knowledge to abide by customary and domestic law regulating the transfer of traditional knowledge.
We use both customary and domestic laws to determine the conditions upon which we may share
our knowledge.
Customary laws: The principle of reciprocity lies at the core of our customary laws on the transfer
of knowledge. We must honour our ancestors and take due consideration of other members of our
community of THPs when considering whether and on what terms we can share our knowledge.
Domestic law: We know our rights under the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity
Act (2004) and the Bioprospecting, Access and Benefit Sharing (BABS) Regulations (2004) and will
require any users to whom the law and regulations apply to comply with the full extent of their
obligations.
Prior informed consent: We will base any consent to use our knowledge and access our
indigenous biological resources on our customary laws and domestic regulations and the process of
providing prior informed consent and deciding on the conditions for transfer will depend largely on
the type of user. For example:
Students wanting to become healers: we want to assist anyone wanting to become a
student of traditional health practices. Prospective students should make arrangements with
any of us to set up a mentorship and can expect to pay a fee.