Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Names of Common Diseases
- List of Maps, Photographs & Tables
- 1 Introduction: African Local Knowledge & Veterinary Pluralism
- 2 Ticks, Tick-borne Diseases & the Limits of Local Knowledge Introduction
- 3 ‘The Grave of the Cow is in the Stomach’: Environment & Nutrition in the Explanation & Prevention of Livestock Diseases
- 4 Transhumance, Animal Diseases & Environment
- 5 Plants & Drugs: Medicating Livestock
- 6 Medicinal Plants: Their Selection & their Properties
- 7 Animal Health & Ideas of the Supernatural
- 8 Gender, Space & the Supernatural
- 9 Conclusion
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
8 - Gender, Space & the Supernatural
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Names of Common Diseases
- List of Maps, Photographs & Tables
- 1 Introduction: African Local Knowledge & Veterinary Pluralism
- 2 Ticks, Tick-borne Diseases & the Limits of Local Knowledge Introduction
- 3 ‘The Grave of the Cow is in the Stomach’: Environment & Nutrition in the Explanation & Prevention of Livestock Diseases
- 4 Transhumance, Animal Diseases & Environment
- 5 Plants & Drugs: Medicating Livestock
- 6 Medicinal Plants: Their Selection & their Properties
- 7 Animal Health & Ideas of the Supernatural
- 8 Gender, Space & the Supernatural
- 9 Conclusion
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
You can't bewitch a cow and the idea that women can spoil the fertility of cattle is totally discredited now.
(Gideon Morule, Mafikeng)If black men say they allow women into the kraal they are probably lying.
(Majeng Motsisi, Mabeskraal)These two quotations, both from commercial farmers from North West Province reflected contrasting viewpoints on the aetiology of diseases. Morule was president of North West Province Farmers Union — an organisation he believed could be an instrument for agricultural education and rural development. He described himself as a progressive farmer and believed that all Tswana stockowners held a modernist view of the world, in which superstitions and supernatural explanations derived from pre-colonial beliefs and traditions had disappeared. These beliefs included witchcraft and what ethnographers have termed ‘ritual pollution’ — the idea that people, most often women, could undermine human and animal health, and even kill, by being in an ‘impure’ condition. Motsisi, by contrast, was an elderly man in his 80s, who had worked for the government and accumulated savings to invest in livestock. In 2010 he had a herd of 75 cattle and rented a government farm. He used some biomedical drugs but also prepared medicinal herbs. He thought that many diseases arose from the environment, but women were responsible for a commonplace problem — the failure of animals to reproduce and their propensity to experience frequent miscarriags.
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- African Local Knowledge and Livestock HealthDiseases and Treatments in South Africa, pp. 221 - 247Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013