Hunting Knowledge and Gathering Herbs: Rastafari Bush Doctors in the Western Cape,South Africa

Abstract

South Africa's history of diverse traditional medical practices gives rise to an emergent bush ethnomedicine in the Western Cape, where the consumption, trade and sale of herbs are dominated by Rastas. Rastafari, a sociopolitical movement and eco-religion, is combined with Khoisan healing tradition to synthesize an alternative lifestyle to dysfunctional township realities. Bush doctors lead this syncretic movement by gathering knowledge of medicinal plants from community elders. Local plant materials are collected to provide affordable medicines to the disadvantaged. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a third of the estimated 200 bush doctors during 2006–2010. This homogenous group of middle-aged coloured urban males have transformed from gangsters to herbalists with a stated mission “to heal all people.” To the mixed race coloured community, who rejected their Khoisan indigenous ancestry during apartheid, bush medicine reasserts indigenous rights to resources, instills pride in coloured traditions and reclaims positive male roles. Rasta bush doctors employ indigenous healing methods as a method of legitimizing this historically marginalized community. Bush medicine presents a racially equitable socialist platform for health care within the shifting racial milieu in a post-apartheid South Africa.