THERE was a very interesting article in last week’s Patriot Health, where Chiratidzo Moyo dwelt on sex-enhancers and marital rape.
She highlighted how herbs and illicit drugs are now openly sold on the streets and at shopping malls.
The gist of the article was that a lot of people have problems with virility or boosting their sexual libidos.
My late father used to give me small roots to chew each time I visited.
These, he gave me, when I had visited with my wife, sometimes he would make me drink herbal mixtures from a gourd he kept under his bed.
Each time I asked him about these herbs, he would smile and say it was men’s herbs and my wife should not know that I drank the mixture.
He would eagerly wait for me the next morning and ask how the herbs worked, to which I smiled at him and did not comment.
When I went back to the city and my wife noticed there was something amiss in the bedroom, she would wish we visited sekuru in the rural areas.
I soon learnt what she meant, and from then on, I asked my father to prepare the mixtures for me, and soon I had a band of friends who would ask me for more when I made them taste what I had brought from home.
Indeed, the herbs had enhanced my sexual drive as well as of others. However, I agree with Moyo’s article that most people are now using these sex enhancers to take advantage of their partners yet they are only meant to be taken when a man’s sexual drive is low, in a stressful situation or a polygamous marriage.
The article also brought to the fore the importance of African medicines, especially African herbs found in the bush, as they play an important role in the lives of African people.
These medicines are not all based on herbs; some are derived from animals, insects, reptiles and rodents.
Today, even urbanised indigenous Zimbabweans have strong social links to traditional medicines as evidenced by the number of signs announcing the presence of herbalists and n’angas.
The value of African medicines should not be underestimated, but today most men would opt for Viagra and other Western medicines whose side effects can be fatal.
However, men nicodimously sneak out to buy these herbs in the quest to sexually satisfy their women, because they would rather not be seen buying traditional medicines at Mbare Musika and other markets.
Because the whiteman has told us that our medicines are bad, this has changed our positive perception of African medicines.
Westerners stampede to African countries to take herbs as well as insects and patent them thereby depriving Africans of their medicines through bio-piracy.
Bio-piracy refers to the use of intellectual property laws (patents, plant breeders’ rights) to gain exclusive rights over genetic resources based on the knowledge and innovation of indigenous peoples; bio-piracy is even taking place in the laboratories of industries and academia, and in patent offices in the Western cities.
The blatant plunder of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources in Zimbabwe and southern Africa by Western pharmaceutical companies continues unabeted.
Since colonisation, private and public enterprises and their intermediaries are actively collecting, sampling and acquiring traditional knowledge systems for the development of medicines.
It is evident pharmaceutical industries are now focusing their attention onto higher plants for potential cures, abandoning synthetic drugs.
This, together with the fast growing alternative medicine sector, is forcing pharmaceutical companies to re-focus their resources in medicine development.
The country continues to lose important medicines to Western countries, notably gundamiti, a herb whose medicinal properties are said to reverse the symptoms of HIV/AIDS.
Another example of a pirated plant is the devil’s claw that grows in the Kalahari Desert and the Zambezi Valley.
It has been used for a long time for the treatment of cancer of the skin and fevers of all kinds.
The plant was also used in developed countries to treat several conditions such as gastro-intestinal problems, arthritis, diabetes and others.
However, a patent has been taken by a German company for the commercialisation and marketing of the products at global scale without considering benefit-sharing mechanisms with the local communities and governments.
The San and the BaTonga of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana have, for centuries, used these traditional medicines.
In addition to using these medicines for various ailments, they were also used on long hunting expeditions to suppress hunger and thirst and as an energy booster.
There is evidence that some well-known companies, working in cahoots with non-governmental organisations, are secretly mobilising villagers in conservation areas to illegally pick the plants for paltry monetary returns.
According to ecologists, the communities where the BaTonga and San live are facing a serious ecological threat due to uncontrolled and over-harvesting of medicinal plants and animals.
Bio-piracy is also rife in the Kaza-TFCA, mainly in the rain forest, which is densely wooded, remote and contains some rare plant species.
The launch of the Kaza Transfrontier Conservation Area a few years ago has opened with it new environmental threats including over-harvesting of medicinal plants, cutting down of trees for timber and poaching due to lack of monitoring.
The Kaza-TFCA is situated in the Okavango and Zambezi River basins where the borders of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia converge.
In the absence of laws regulating the usage of Africa’s natural resources, the continent stands to lose out on indigenous knowledge of native flora and fauna. On the flipside, multi-nationals stand to gain billions of dollars from using this knowledge.
Do not be embarrassed by procuring traditional medicines. I regret never asking my father about the helpful herbs he mixed for me, but please don’t abuse these herbs!