The Deputy-Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Ms Rejoice Mabudafhasi, urged community members to stop calling traditional healers by degrading names like witchdoctors, matwetwe and zwigomamutanda.

She was addressing more than 700 traditional healers during the launch of the Vhembe Traditional Health Practitioners Association in the Thohoyandou Town Hall last Thursday.

"Why call them with funny names, when they are doing the same job as their western counterparts? Those bad titles were given with a view to driving patients away from traditional healers to embrace western medicine. When they prepare their healing stuff, you call it muti whereas the stuff prepared by the west is called medication. This is wrong because they are all here to save lives," said the Deputy-Minister.

She said the launch of the association is a long journey to reclaim their lost heritage. "Many practices of our culture are on the brink of extinction and initiatives like this one are an encouraging but long overdue step. We all know that indigenous knowledge, especially the kind relating to traditional healing, was undermined under the previous government and therefore started diminishing at an alarming rate. Over the last centuries, western multinational companies and institutions would glean important traditional medicinal knowledge, patent it as their own and use it commercially without either acknowledging the sources or paying compensation. When faced with the scenario of losing patent rights, the traditional health practitioners chose to exit the profession rather than enrich westerners while continuously subjecting themselves to exploitation."

Mabudafhasi said the government is committed to fighting diseases such as TB, cancer, and HIV/AIDS by all means possible. "Do we really want to throw away the God-given talent to produce medicine for curing various ailments? Can we really afford to see our nation perishing whilst we have the knowledge and means of offering prevention? We are pleased that the government has recognized the contribution of African traditional medicine. The government acknowledges that the 200 000 traditional healers currently practicing in South Africa are the first to be consulted by patients in 80% of cases. African traditional medicine has now inspired interest and cooperation between the government, the Medical Research Council and the Scientific and Industrial Research Council to conduct research, identify education and training in traditional medicine, protect indigenous knowledge through patents and intellectual property rights, promote research into diseases and establish a processing business."

She concluded by saying that poaching of medicinal plants and other species in South Africa is a big problem which has now reached an alarming rate. "Unsustainable harvesting practices which slow plant regeneration severely, irresponsible veld fires and insensitive residential and industrial development paint a dire picture of the problems we have today. Theft of endangered plant and animal species will destroy our environment and your business before it begins if the problem is not dealt with urgently. These selfish and short-sighted acts only offer short-term benefits."