The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Saturday, December 20, 1992— About 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s population consults traditional healers for various ailments, a director of the newly formed Union of Professional Herbal Practitioners, has claimed.

In an interview in Bulawayo on Thursday Mr Ephraim Mlapisane, who is a herbal practitioner said the union, formed in 1988, grew indigenous and exotic trees at a nursery located in the Centenary Park.

He said the union was developing the nursery into a training centre where traditional healers could be taught “sustainable harvesting” of these plants from the wild.

“We have very close ties with students from the National University of Science and Technology and the general public can also be taught about traditional medicinal plants,” said Mr Mlapisane.

He said contrary to earlier reports the nursery was not run by the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers’ Association but by professional herbalists along scientific lines.

He said the union had close working relationships with organisations such as the Forestry Commission, the Natural Resources Board and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management.

The union also bought some medicinal plants from private nurseries, Mr Mlapisane said, and to avoid contradictions in the naming of the plants, the union was establishing a library where traditional plants in the country would be identified in English, Latin and in the two main local languages.