Jul-10BIOCULTURAL PROTOCOL
Jul. 12
traditional health practitioner. We also induct new traditional health practitioners, providing
initiation and training, thus passing on our knowledge and culture to future generations.
All of the above contributes to healthy communities, builds leadership and morale, and promotes
our culture.
We have a wealth of traditional knowledge
Each one of us has received a calling to become a healer and has been inducted
and studied with other healers. We gain our knowledge in four main ways: we
are taught by our mentors, during our dreams we receive our ancestors’
knowledge that is passed down through the generations, we innovate on our
knowledge and we receive knowledge from other traditional health practitioners.
Whilst we share much common knowledge, each one of us has specialized areas of expertise and
corresponding knowledge. Thus our knowledge is at the same time ancestral, common and
individually held. If we give our knowledge to others without taking into consideration our ancestors
and fellow healers, we will anger our ancestors and jeopardize the sanctity of our common
knowledge. We can share our knowledge, but only after appropriate consultations and on the basis
of reciprocity, including benefit sharing. We lament the loss of knowledge that has already taken
place, in most cases without any acknowledgement of the source of the knowledge and in the
absence of benefit sharing.
We connect our communities via our culture to our biodiversity
A large amount of our medicines are collected directly from the areas in which we live, mostly from
communal areas around our villages. This makes us very aware of the links between biodiversity, our
livelihoods and the health of our communities.
Our harvesting of medicinal plants is guided by our spiritual values and is regulated by our customary
laws that promote the sustainability of our natural resources. For example, we ask our ancestors as
we harvest to ensure that the medicines will have their full effect, and believe that only harvested
leaves or bark that are taken in ways that ensure the survival of the plant or tree will heal the
patient. This means that we take only strips of bark, selected leaves of stems of plants, and always
cover the roots of trees or plants after we have collected what we require. Also, we have rules linked
to the seasons in which we can collect various plants, with severe consequences such as jeopardizing
rains if they are transgressed. Because we harvest for immediate use, we never collect large scale
amounts of any particular resource, tending to collect a variety of small samples. This inhibits overharvesting.
We protect biodiversity in other ways, such as guarding against veld fires and discouraging poaching
of plants by muti hunters. These ecologically-based customary laws and methods of sustainable
harvesting are passed on to our students, perpetuating our biocultural values.
Our livelihoods are threatened through biodiversity loss and the taking of our traditional
knowledge without the sharing of benefits
As traditional health practitioners we perform an important role in society, but it is a difficult one.
We face three main challenges, namely: access to medicinal plants, benefit sharing from our
knowledge and discrimination.