“MEDICINE MEN” SEEK PROTECTION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 102, 3 May 1938, Page 11

“MEDICINE MEN” SEEK PROTECTION

HEALING WITH AH) OF AFRICAN HERBS JOHANNESBURG (By Mail). Native ’‘medicine men,” who held their second annual conference in Bloemfontein under the aegis of the Free State African Herbalists’ Association have passed a resolution asking the Minister of Justice to investigate the indiscriminate arrests of some herbalists for “practising as doctors.” The resolution also submits that members of the association “have a natural and inalienable right to make use of natural African herbs which have been proved efficacious in healing disease.” The association has decided to ask for legal protection and the issue ot permits to members for the unrestricted sale of herbs and herbal medicines on the same lines as those supplied to herbalists in Natal, Zululanci and the Transvaal. “We have no record of ever having abused our knowledge and tried experience in the art of dispensing herbs either by wilful, careless or indiscriminate destruction of life, and this fact alone discredits the assumption that we are a menace to public health” was the tenor of another resolution. Congress asked for an importial inquiry into the general status and constitution of the association in relation to the petition for recognition which was refused by Parliament in January, 1937. In his presidential address Mr. Daniel T. Mafata said: “Most of you of the African race are able to testify that natural herbal roots and medicines have given relief to thousands of people—many such medicines being the same as those used by our ancestors ,who helped people afflicted with disease. “These herbs are our natural healing media and it is not easy to discard them. Some European medicines are made of the same African roots that you medicine men are using.”