The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) held its 8th annual Citizen Science Awareness Workshop at Moretele Park in Mamelodi on Tuesday.
According to SANBI’s Principal Specialist on Ecological Infrastructure, the workshop is part of a series of workshops which have been held throughout the province of Gauteng as a result of a memorandum of understanding which has been signed between SANBI, the Department of Water and Sanitation as well as an organisation called Nature Speaks Nature Responds, which is led by sangoma Gogo Sibiya.
“Our aquatic ecosystems systems are facing threats of pollution and climate change and as SANBI we have decided to enter into a working partnership with traditional health practitioners because besides working in their indumbaz, their workplaces involve natural places like mountains, wetlands and rivers which are areas of interest to SANBI in its efforts to preserve the environment,” she said.
She said through the workshops, traditional healers will be empowered with skills and knowledge on how to collect data; to look at the status of our rivers in the country, what are the contributing factors that make our rivers dirty,” she said.
“SANBI wants to integrate indegenous knowledge systems with conventional knowledge systems to preserve the ecosystem,” said Cindi.
“We need to go back to our roots as a country to figure out what was happening in ancient times whereby nature nature was functioning and thriving without being disturbed by human activities,” she said.
The Department of Water and Sanitation National Co-ordinator of Adopt A River/ Citizen Science National Programme Noloyiso Mbiza told Tshwane Talks that their programme works hand-in-hand with community members in taking care of water resources.
“Traditional healers are part of the community and in most cases, they are trusted by the community, so by empowering them with skills to take care of the environment, they will automatically disseminate those skills to the wider community,” she said.
Nature Champs Nature Speaks member and traditional healer Christina Zulu Ncube said members of the community, including traditional healers, must be made aware that nature suffers a lot due to items like snuff, candles, razors, dead goats, mats, muthi and bottles being thrown into the river.”
She pointed out that in some instances healers and their patients get cut by items like bottles and other sharp-edged items when they go into the river to perform healing activities.
“This makes the whole healing exercise futile because the patient ends up being worse off than he was before as a result of the injury he has suffered in the river,” she said.
She also revealed that some companies every three months or so they as healers find rivers overflowing with foam which emanates from sewerage and acid, oil and chemicals thrown secretly at night into the river by manufacturing companies.
Gogo Somhlolo Dlamini said the workshop is a brilliant idea as it merges the Western and traditional sciences, this as sangomas are by origin nature conservationists.
“This workshop is long overdue because in all fairness natural resources like mountains and rivers don’t rejuvenate themselves and if we don’t respect these resources then we are doomed,” she said.
She pointed out that it is not only sangomas who pollute mountains with unwarranted items, but that prayer leaders and pastors also dump milk and egg cartons mountains or into the river, and that it is important for everyone who uses nature’s resources to clean up after performing their cleansing rituals.
“Nature can’t absorb all the dirt all the time and I am over the moon that this workshop has highlighted this very fact,” she said.
Somhlolo Dlamini enthused that modern sangomas are not like old sangomas who insisted that people had to stay dirty at all times.
“We subscribe to the saying that holds that cleanliness is next to Godliness, which is our ancestors, and we are not changing the processes of nature, but we want to take care of nature as we have only one planet,” she said.
CEO of Nature Speaks Nature Responds Gogo Sibeko said all types of healers must clean up after performing their rituals in the river because the dirt that a healer leaves behind in the river spoils it and makes it impossible for other healers to perform their duties therein.
“A river doesn’t belong only to one traditional healer so healers must take care of the rivers so as to allow other healers to also be able to heal their patients under clean and pristine conditions just the way nature intended,” she said.
Sibeko pointed out that nature is very angry regarding the carelessness with which it is treated, and that this fact can be seen in incidents of kids drowning in the rivers, floods, low water levels in the rivers, lightnings and overly hot weather conditions.