Govts should rethink Indigenous Knowledge Systems

05 Jul, 2020 - 00:07 0 Views
Govts should rethink Indigenous Knowledge Systems

The Sunday News

Vincent Gono, Features Editor
THE preservation of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) has not been so easy in so many developing countries as the tidal wave of globalisation has had an imperialistic enveloping effect on the important but often disregarded body of local knowledge.

Globalisation has been threatening to sweep to extinction the remaining vestiges of indigenous knowledge forms that have resisted death despite the racial and colonial onslaughts that they have suffered at the hands of Western imperialism and arrogance.

These forms of knowledge (IKS) have originated locally and naturally and have survived for a very long time through the processes of acculturation and through kinship relationships that societal groups form and hand down to posterity through oral tradition and so many other cultural practices forming adhesives that bind society as they constitute communicative processes through which knowledge is transmitted, preserved, and acquired by humans in their different geographical areas.

Thus every society is bound to have knowledge in one form or another since each society has its own experiences of reality. This experience of reality over time develops among an indigenous people an understanding of causal effect relationships that naturally drives them to develop adaptation methods that become their body of knowledge. Indigenous knowledge bodies encompass medical practices, education systems, food and culinary habits, social relations, belief systems, weather and environmental adaptation techniques among others.

These however, despite being readily available, cheap, locally relevant, easy to use and effective have largely been ignored as people opt for and become obsessed with foreign goods.

This has not been without cost to the country especially in the area of medicine, food and culinary items where a lot of the country’s revenue has been spent on imports to wet the citizens’ appetite for foreign goods when IKS could be developed and commercialised.

The closure of borders to a number of imports due coronavirus has however, forced a number of countries to rethink modelling their economies around a strong local production base and IKS come naturally to the fore as the starting point of going back to basics.

In Zimbabwe, medical provisions that were imported or smuggled through leakages at various ports of entry became scarce and the law of demand and supply takes effect with a surge in prices beyond the reach of many in an economy characterised by price distortions, profiteering and speculative behaviour.

This has forced a good majority into use of traditional medicine as an accessible and cheap option to conventional medicine that is bought in scarce forex. Prior to that, traditional medicine has faced demonisation and denigration.

Scarcity and cost of conventional medicine is likely going to see an increase in the percentage of people relying on traditional medicine for their primary care needs in developing countries from an estimated 80% of their populations according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Research has shown that demand for medicinal plants is increasing in both developing and developed countries, and surprisingly, the bulk of the material traded is still from wild harvested sources on forest lands and only a very small number of species are cultivated.

The only adverse effect of the expanding trade in medicinal plants however, is the threat to survival of several plant species, with many under serious risk to become extinct.

Medical scientist and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Council member Professor Bartholomew Mazuru Gundidza said prior to the advent of science and research that birthed conventional drugs, large numbers of African families (both rural and urban) used traditional medicine for their health care, much so because it was accessible, affordable, culturally appropriate and acceptable.

He said despite the increasing acceptance of traditional medicine in Zimbabwe’s rural and urban communities caused inaccessibility and cost of conventional treatment, the rich indigenous knowledge was not adequately documented.

“Documentation of plants used as traditional medicines is therefore needed so that our indigenous knowledge systems can be preserved and the plants conserved and used sustainably. There is need for a deliberate paradigm shift in policy towards what is local as coronavirus has taught us the effects of relying on imports,” he said.

He added that nature was a pharmacy where a number of wild fruits could be used to treat various cancers.

Musimboti Traditional Science and Technology Institute director and herbalist Mr Morgan Zimunya said it was true that populations in developing and developed countries rely on traditional medicine.

He said even powerhouses such as India and China were known for their unwavering policy that encourages the use traditional medicine harvested through indigenous knowledge systems.

Mr Zimunya said through traditional medicine he could cure snake bites, sugar diabetes, intestinal upsets, headaches, high blood pressure, kidneys, cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, genital warts, skin diseases including erectile dysfunction.

He however, said he doesn’t believe in traditional medicine to enlarge manhood as claimed by others, adding that it was absurd for anyone to suggest that traditional medicine does not work as it was used before the advent of modern medicine.

He however, posited that there was a need for a deliberate policy as was in the communities to protect the harvesting of medicines in order to preserve medicinal tree species that were normally indigenous and wild.

“I harvest some of the medicine from the wild trees. The idea is to know which tree cures what and the method to harvest. You will find out that our elders knew how to protect the trees and would prescribe that one should get the tree bark from the east and the west to ensure that the tree was not ringed as it would kill the tree. That was a conservation strategy and it made sure medicine tree species were protected,” said Mr Zimunya.

Besides, communities knew where to go and those that were into the art of traditional medicine knew how to protect the trees from extinction.

He said there was need to raise awareness on traditional medicine as an important aspect of IKS as well as ensure medicinal plants were adequately included in forest conservation and utilisation programmes.

Forest conservationist and environmentalist Mr Barnabas Mawire said medicinal plants link together the physical environments of local communities and their use of plants in promoting and maintaining their health.

He said IKS emphasised environment conservation through preservation of tree species that were valued for their medicinal purposes.

He however, said prospects for the future supply of medicinal plants impact the long term viability of traditional health systems if no deliberate steps were taken to promote sustainable use of the plants that were usually non-wood.

Mr Mawire emphasised on the training of practitioners.

“Training of practitioners and preservation of traditional ecological and medical knowledge lie at the core of future prospects for ancient traditions. In many traditional societies, medicinal plants play a very important role in providing everyday health care to the majority of the population of most developing countries.

Share This:

Survey


We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey

This will close in 20 seconds