AZAPO CALLS ON THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH TO ENGAGE WITH THE TRADITIONAL HEALERS OF SOUTH AFRICA
By Jabu Rakwena
National Spokesperson of AZAPO
Our history of condescending approach towards the poor and marginalised as practiced during apartheid has no place in a democratic dispensation, and it is against that backdrop that AZAPO calls on the Department of Health to genuinely engage with the Traditional Healers of South Africa.
Engagement and consultation should not be just a tick-box exercise and malicious compliance but should be aimed at showing respect to the views and concerns raised by those engaged with.
The Traditional Health Practitioners Council of South Africa and the Department of Health are set to embark on a nationwide roadshow and “public consultation” regarding the
Regulations to govern the traditional healers’ practitioners (THPs).
There are over 300 000 THPs in South Africa who get consulted by many citizens of the country.
The contentious Regulations were crafted without the substantive engagement with the THPs and those with deep understanding of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS).
The Regulations are condescendingly simplistic and not backed by standard ethical and professional rules of conduct.
The medical and health sphere is the most contested terrain and capitalist interests, and
the pharmaceutical industry would do their utmost to either take control of traditional medicine or squeeze traditional practitioners out of competition.
The Department of Health should be vigilant enough not to be used to harm the THPs.
Since its establishment in 2007, the Interim Traditional Health Practitioners Council of South Africa has done very little to achieve its mandate to “provide for a regulatory framework to ensure the efficacy, safety and quality of traditional health care services, to provide for the management and control over the registration, training and conduct of
practitioners, students etc”.
After all the years the best that the Council could do was to come out with a three-page document.
That shows disregard and makes mockery of the regulatory process and continues to undermine the intelligence of the THPs.
The concerns raised by the THPs cannot be brushed aside and ignored.
AZAPO calls upon the Department and the Council to embrace the spirit of ubuntu and engage genuinely with the THPs and address the drafting of code of ethics for the sector and develop guidelines for the recognition, mainstreaming and fiscal inclusion of traditional health practices in the public budget.
This process is critical building blocks towards the legislative framework, and the omission thereof makes a mockery of the regulatory process and continues to undermine THP sector.
The engagement with a selected few just to tick the box and claim to have had public consultation is not acceptable and will leave many behind.
This approach is divisive and has no place in democracy.