BIOCULTURAL PROTOCOL
2010
Biocultural Protocol Of The
Traditional Health Practitioners
Of Bushbuckridge
Who we are and what this protocol stands for
We are a group of over 80 traditional health
practitioners (referred to here as “healers”) living in the
Bushbuckridge area of Mpumalanga, which is in the
North East of South Africa. Bushbuckridge lies on the
Westerly perimeter of the Kruger National Park and falls
within the Kruger to Canyons (UNESCO) Biosphere
Region (K2C). The K2C is currently the fourth largest
Biosphere Reserve in the world, and encompasses a very large array of animal and plant biodiversity.
It is also home to over 1m people, the vast majority of which earn among the lowest wages in South
Africa. We are all from either Sepedi or Tsonga communities.
As a group, we are committed to keeping our communities healthy which includes tending to their
physical, cultural and spiritual wellbeing. Because our muti, or traditional medicines, come from the
areas in which we live, we are also committed to protecting our biodiversity and ensuring that any
use of our biodiversity or knowledge directly benefits us and our communities.
This protocol provides details of:
Our contribution to the health of our communities;
Our traditional knowledge;
How we connect our communities via our culture to our biodiversity;
The threats to our livelihood posed by biodiversity loss and the taking of our traditional
knowledge without the sharing of benefits;
How we want to improve conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants; and
Information for people wanting to access our traditional knowledge and medicinal plants.
We contribute to the health of our communities
As traditional health practitioners we work to keep our communities healthy and heal those that
suffer from illnesses or injuries. Whilst we share common knowledge of the main types of illnesses,
each one of us has a specific way of treating those illnesses. We also specialize in the types of
ailments we treat and cross refer patients to each other depending on their symptoms. Notably, the
people we treat are poor and we often provide healthcare regardless of whether they can pay or
not. Our ancestors prohibit us from pressuring people for money, so we rely on goodwill and
reciprocity.
As well as treating conventional illnesses, we perform a number of other culturally significant roles
in the community. We connect community members to their ancestors in a number of different
ways, including in assisting families when their newborn babies cry for their names, carry out coming
of age ceremonies, providing counselling for a range of issues, chase away evil spirits through
cleansing ceremonies, and determine when the ancestors are calling someone to become a
TRADITIONAL HEALTH PRACTITIONERS OF BUSHBUCKRDIGE
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