The Sunday Mail
Disability Issues
Dr Christine Peta
DRIVEN by an immense fear of disability, most African families consider it important to establish the reasons it (disability) has come upon some members, before seeking rehabilitation.
The first port of call is often the traditional healer, who is believed to possess the power to explain causes of disability to the consulting family members.
The most common traditional beliefs of disability in Zimbabwe are related to spirits, witchcraft, breaking traditional customs or contravening taboos.
Drawing from such beliefs, traditional healers provide explanations of the causes of disability in relation to a person’s body, with the healer’s enlightenments also encompassing a person’s entire social background.
As such, the process of choosing either a traditional or modern health care system can only begin after the traditional healer has illuminated the cause of disability.
The modern health care system may progressively take over the upkeep of a person with disabilities, but only after the traditional healer has addressed the question of why the condition has come upon that individual.
When faced with disability, the “why” question usually takes centre stage in most families.
From an African traditional perspective, most people believe that, compared to formally trained doctors who are perceived as health care professionals who just rush to write medical prescriptions, traditional healers are viewed as “doctors” who take their time to expound on the causes of disability, taking the family, community and ancestral spirits of the person into consideration.
However, the “why” question is undervalued in Western society, as disability is generally looked at from an angle of coincidence or biology.
Deliberating on the perception of disability as coincidence, Devlieger (1995, p98) quotes Robert Murphy’s Western-oriented viewpoint: “In all these years since the onset of my illness, I have never consciously asked ‘Why me’. I feel that this is a very foolish question that assumes some cosmic sense of purpose and direction in the universe that simply does not exist”.
Murphy’s utterances are generally intolerable in Africa, including in Zimbabwean communities.
If, by the end of the day, all relations prescribed by a traditional healer are perceived to be normal, then the cause of any form of disability is apportioned to God.
Since God denotes a realm that lies beyond the reach, influence or control of humanity, “God is a residual category that is used when no other cause can be found”.
Before the arrival of early colonisers at the turn of the 19th century, traditional healers were held in very high esteem in the rehabilitation sector in Zimbabwe.
The prowess of traditional healers is unquestionable. It is believed a huge number of such healers possess in-depth knowledge of various plants and their different medicinal powers. Furthermore, traditional healers are deemed to have the power to explain the cause of a person’s health and social difficulties by, among other things, throwing the bones.
A number of medicines used by traditional healers seem to be effective where modern science has failed to find a cure. However, for some reason, modern science is regarded as infallible.Before colonisation, traditional healers enjoyed a great monopoly, as both medical and social experts, leading traditional healing and rehabilitation programmes.
However, colonisers came and branded them devil worshippers, who were destined to burn in hell if they failed to repent and worship God. Furthermore, the dawn of Western education, Christianity and contemporary health care saw traditional healers being relegated to primitive status, as their work was grossly misunderstood.
However, all efforts made by early colonisers to dent the traditional health care approaches were unsuccessful, given that the majority of the population in Zimbabwe still continues to consult traditional healers, alongside modern health care systems.
African traditional healers have discovered plants and organs of fish, animals, insects, birds and snakes that are often successfully used in treatment.
Furthermore, in cases where traditional medicines prove to be ineffective, people may still get well because the traditional healer takes a broader healthcare approach, to tackle both the medical and social problems of the affected individual.
The practice takes place under a one-stop traditional setting that involves the person, their family and their community. Consequently, the “job description” of the traditional healer entails not only medical treatment but also psychosocial support and counselling.
Traditional healers provide rehabilitation services from their homes, which are located within the communities, where people, including persons with disabilities, live. They cater for more than 80 percent of the Zimbabwean society.
Statistics from 2001 indicated that at that time, there were about 45 000 traditional healers, compared to approximately 1 400 formally trained doctors in Zimbabwe.
Local literature reveals that, among other things, the choice of a health care approach at the onset of a disability is largely influenced by the circumstances and initial diagnosis of the condition by the family.
However, an individual’s disability is commonly regarded as a family affair, hence, decisions pertaining to treatment and rehabilitation are usually taken at family level.
Proclamations by traditional healers may direct a person with disability and his or her family against seeking modern medical health care, on the grounds that this may anger the ancestors. But other people may consult traditional healers on the grounds of a pure allegiance to culture and their own diagnosis of the cause of the disability. Unlike the modern health care centres, traditional healers charge a negotiable fee for their services.
Furthermore, in cases where full payment is not available at the time of consultation, such fees can be paid in instalments, against a criterion that calculates payment on the basis of the extent to which a problem is complex.
Payments can be levied in cash, or in other forms of payment such as cows, goats and harvested crops.
Whilst modern health care systems are generally accepted throughout Africa, they have not substituted, but have, instead, augmented the traditional health care systems.
The general belief is that there are just some African “things” that modern health care systems cannot understand.
Nonetheless, there is no reason for modern and traditional health care systems to be antagonistic towards one another as they sometimes make use of similar procedures.
* Dr Christine Peta is a disability, policy, international development and research expert, who is the national director of Disability Affairs in Zimbabwe. She can be contacted on: [email protected]
