Medicinal plants, knowledge and society: from the point of view of South African Rastafarians
This article concentrates on the healing role played by plants within the South African Rastafarian movement in the Cape Town townships, particularly from the point of view of the anthropology of health, science and technology. In a more generalized study, the author traces the ethnographical path of the South African medicinal plant, Artemisia afra (A. afra) as it goes through various preparatory stages leading to clinical testing. The twofold objective of scientific verification and promotion of traditional knowledge pursued by the preclinical testing of A. afra raises various epistemological issues while the scientists, and the Xhosa amaggirhas (healers) and inyangas (herbalists) profile various concepts of efficacy. Alongside the latter are found the Rastafarian herbalists who also defend their traditional knowledge concerning medicinal plants, including those dealing with the A. afra. The path of the Rastafarian herbalists and their sacred herb, the dagga (cannabis sativa, ganja), occupy a special role in relation to A. afra, which is covered here. The study highlights the unifying relations that the dagga exercises within Rastafarian phytotherapeutic practices, relations that are paradoxically intensified by antagonistic relations with the South African bio-medical-legal system in a context of globalization. Therefore, the article does not seek to render the Rastafarian movement exotic, but to understand the articulations and propositions which could inform and defy current scientific and bio-political epistemologies. In conclusion, the way of promoting traditional knowledge of plants by using scientific clinical testing remains extremely limiting. The exploration of new ways of understanding the efficacy of remedies is suggested.