South African Herbalists Association
Health Freedom for All By Year 2000
FROM THE OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN
THE SECRETARIAT
INTERIM CO-ORDINATING COMMITTEE FOR TRADITIONAL MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS OF SOUTH AFRICA
P.O. BOX 4340
JOHANNESBURG
2000
ATTENTION : TMP S.W. SPOGTER
Fax : 011 - 3368808
Anthony Rees
Chairman
South African Herbalist’s Association
10 Protea Lodge
290 Cowey Road
Berea
Durban
4001
Tel / Fax : 031-231438
E-Mail : d2earth@iafrica.com
21st January 1999
As the Chairman of the New South African Herbalist’s Association I would like to extend greetings to the Interim Coordinating Committee for Traditional Medical Practitioners of South Africa
As this millennium draws to a close I look at the world and it’s problems, especially it’s medical problems and realize that the medical system as it stands today is neither equipped, nor ready to handle the challenges of the new millennium with severe shortages of finances, facilities and personal.
As a trained Western Herbalist, I feel it is now time for all healers across the globe to unite and take back our birthright to heal the people of this ailing world without having the fear of being prosecuted for being unregistered or branded as a Witch Doctor. Of course this reclaiming of our rightful titles of healers from the allopathically biased model of health care will be a battle of truth and will require a greater interaction of all role players. We too, have become victims of the apartheid regime.
As a herbalist, among many other western herbalists I have been ridiculed by the system and have been severely discriminated against by even those who claim to be guardians of complimentary medicine, namely the Chiropractic, Homeopathic Interim Council, who have illegally closed our right to register as Herbalists under their Council. In 1975 this Council closed the registers for Herbalism and Naturopathy, allowing some chosen individuals to keep their registrations and allowing them to find a niche in the herbal manufacturing industry thereby allowing them to form muti-million companies under their registration numbers. The people now dominate the Council, in spite of the fact that they do not practice Herbalism. This imbalance has allowed gross discrimination to be placed on non-registered Herbalists in South Africa of all backgrounds.
Today the Chiropractic, Homeopathic Council still thrives as a non-democratic , inequitable, and non-transparent entity, despite the minister Of Health , Dr. N. Zuma making the Council an Interim Council. In 1994 our Association approached this Council to re-open the register for Herbalism. For four years others and myself have repeatedly requested that the Council lives up to it’s mandate by applying equal dispensation to all by opening the register. Over the last four years our Association have lodged complaints with the Ministry of Health and the Department of Health, but to no avail because of the perpetuation of the apartheid status quo into the new order.. Even more disgustingly, when we were invited to make oral submissions on the Councils performance in Parliament last year, the Chairman , Mr. Michael O’ Brien, deliberately requested that the committee not include us and other reform orientated organizations, eg. PHARMAPACT of which the ICC is an Alliance Partner via the Health Freedom South Africa Indaba Initiative in the list of speakers.
This deliberate attempt by the Council to shut us up, has proven without a doubt that this Council is engaged in questionable activities. While attending a lecture of a prominent health care company, I approached one of the Councilors, and asked him when the registers will be opened to all people of the Republic of South Africa. His reply was " As long as I am on this Council, no blacks will register."
I truly believe that the persons on this Council do not have the public’s interest at heart and are deliberately keeping Herbalists out of the system in an effort to protect their financial interests and to perpetuate homeopathy, a pseudo-science without any socially redeemable attributes, although due to pressure from herbalists associations such as ours, pseudo reforms are being instituted by way of opening the register for herbalists amongst others
. We note with interest that this excludes African Herbalists which is in conflict with the Bill of Rights in the Constitution (Equality Clause). In this regard PHARMAPACT, with a mandate from the ICC raised this, plus other issues in Parliament in October (myself included raised these issues in Parliament), but had our submissions scandalously withdrawn from the Parliamentary records, and thereby denying the ICC their voice in Parliament.I have now been informed that the Council have begun looking at opening the register for Herbalists, however the process of getting role players involved in the process from grass roots up is grossly lacking. The Council have now embarked on an illegal course of setting up a committee for this purpose without public notice, or approaching the various stake holders, including our association and the ICC. Instead , the Council have sided with a group of non-representative Herbalists who have a membership of approximately 10 people. Even worse the Council has appointed a chairman for this committee who is not even a herbalist. Instead he is a "fat cat" with a R 25 million company who we believe sees an opportunity to increase his sales through this effort by getting a list of herbalists.
Last week I telephoned the Council’s Registrar, Mrs. Leonie Mc Donald to request that I have someone from our Association on this committee, and I was told that the committee was too full and that if we wanted to be a part of the process, we could remain observers. As immediate past chairman of the SANHA I find this an insult and indicative of the dirty politics at play.
It has come to our attention that the Council and this illegal forum, namely the sub-committee for the registration of herbalists has set unrealistic entry levels for registration, namely that the practitioner must have been practicing for ten years, and/or have a four year degree in Herbalism. Any honest appraisal of this situation surely highlights the deliberate attempt to selectively accept some people and
reject the vast majority of practitioners (mostly indigenous). Even more alarming is that the Vice Chairman of this committee is requesting that his correspondence course in Herbalism be the only recognized institution to teach people how to become herbalists. We believe that should there be any such rule making, the government’s Council should tender this opportunity to all role-players. Personally I believe that the Department of Health should fund such training because of the gross inequities of the past where allopathic (orthodox medicine) training institutions got the lion's share of funding, while Traditional healing methods were suppressed and ignored for all the years.We feel that in this regard, the State is (possibly under misguided control or out of ignorance) setting up further discriminatory laws, by creating one register for white herbalists and one for black herbalists.
We have to highlight this gross inequality to the relevant authorities, so that we can stop this evil from being perpetuated.Because of the track record of this Council and it’s highly discriminatory practices, we, as the majority of predominantly European Herbalists, trained in the Western Herbal Tradition (as a result of apartheid policies), would like to disassociate with the Chiropractic, Homeopathic Interim Council and become part of a new, multi-racial, democratic forum, where we can work together by sharing skills and build a better future for all.
This Council has done nothing for us for almost 20 years, we can not simply trust them now ? How can we, when our members have even been arrested and charged for practicing God's work of employing Mother Nature for man's ills.We would like to fall under the umbrella of the ICC as soon as possible to that we can put a stop to these injustices of the past. Together we can collaborate of projects, such as education and political strategies to place Traditional Medicine in all its facets, on the road to health freedom for all.
Looking forward to your reply.
Anthony Rees
(Chairman : SAHA)