RECAP: In 2017, various estimates put the South African muthi trade market at about R3-billion a year. But traders, like the men from Ga-Chuene, Limpopo, may never have even R5 000 in the bank.
Elias Thabo Marotola was hard at work harvesting medicinal plants in a thicket at the foot of the Mogodumo mountain in Limpopo when he suddenly felt his fingers go numb.
It is late morning on a bright Wednesday and temperatures are already soaring close to 30°C. Marotola’s colleagues constantly dashout into the sweltering sun and across the busy intersection to reach every car and truck that stops to buy muthi. While the debate rages over land nationally, with much of the focus on commercial agricultural land, muthi traders like Marotola face a battle of their own. At the hearings into proposed changes to Section 25 of the Constitution in June, sangomas, izinyanga and muthi traders raised concerns that they are deprived of access to land to harvest medicinal plants.
Marotola and his fellow traders in Chuenespoort are not aware of such developments. To them, the land is a Garden of Eden given to them by the gods, their knowledge of plants and the wisdom passed down to them by the elders who also learnt from their forebears. Water is collected in buckets from natural springs in the area. Wood fires are lit to boil some of the mixtures. These mixtures are poured into an assortment of containers
“Women are the biggest buyers of these. Some buy for their lazy men and others for themselves,” says Marotola, who swears the potions turn lousy lovers into roaring lions.
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