Wildlife Officials Target Traditional Healers In Uganda to Curb Poaching

KAMPALA, UGANDA — Mulangira Ndawusi’s shop is filled with items used in traditional spiritual and medical healing: spears, calabashes, barkcloth, baskets, cowrie shells, wooden mortars, herbs and more.

Up until a few weeks ago, Ndawusi had other items on display, too: a leopard’s skin, a horn of a kob (a type of antelope), or an eagle’s feather. Now, the Uganda Wildlife Authority is cracking down on people who deal in those types of banned items.

“Two weeks back, a colleague of mine a few meters from here was arrested in possession of a lion skin,” he says.

Ndawusi says he doesn’t trade in animal products anymore. According to the wildlife authority’s 2014-2015 report, people convicted of wildlife-related crimes in the year covered by the report were fined between 150,000 to 2,000,000 shillings, and faced a jail term of three to 40 months, in addition to community service.

Traditional medicine practitioners could until recently find supplies, including wild animal parts, easily. Snakes, lions, kob, serval and other animals and their parts were readily available.

All that changed in October, when the wildlife authority began carrying out raids on shops that supply traditional medicine practitioners with these goods, according to the wildlife authority and people involved in traditional medicine.

Almost 1,300 people have been arrested on suspicion of committing wildlife-related crimes during the year covered by the 2014-2015 wildlife authority report. Of those, 96 people were convicted. It’s not clear how many of those were people who sell animals or their parts to traditional healers, but each case involved endangered animals, says Simplicious J. Gessa, public relations officer at the wildlife authority.

Traditional healers, and the people who sell animal parts to them, have mastered the art of depleting wildlife, Gessa says. He adds that their practices have led to a decline in some species, including the pangolin, which he says the wildlife authority currently considers to be among the most endangered animals.

There are eight species of African and Asian pangolins, all of which are threatened to varying degrees, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Some trade of the African pangolin species’ is legal, but illegal trade of all pangolins appears to be occurring at an “industrial scale,” CITES Secretary-General John Scanlon said in his remarks to open a pangolin workshop in Vietnam last year.

People found in possession of endangered animals in Uganda must explain why they have them, Gessa says. From there, some people who possess these items may be taken to court. Gorillas and elephants are among the other animals the authority considers endangered, he says.

Retailers say they shouldn’t be blamed for poaching.

“We retailers don’t poach these animals,” Ndawusi says. “We buy these products from the village hunters, who will sell them to us after they’ve consumed the meat. When we get these parts we then sell them to the spiritual traditional healers or their patients.”

Ronald Ssemanda, a traditional healer, says the wildlife authority can’t prove that traditional healers are to blame for the decline in certain endangered species.

“They just carry out random raids, affecting a traditional practice that has been in existence for centuries,” he says.

The raids deny those who seek traditional healing out of necessity, he says.

Ssemanda says he uses only a small number of animal parts.

“In a year I would get one or two clients needing such a product for healing, and there aren’t many of us giving such services,” he says.

Gessa admits that the wildlife authority doesn’t have any data to prove that traditional healers are the cause of endangered species, but says their work affects wildlife populations.

“Our focus as UWA is to protect wildlife, and any activity that endangers wildlife is our concern, including the one by the traditional healing retailers and their partners,” he says. “Because of our devotion, the big cats like lions and the leopard’s population has been stable for a while and we feel they are not endangered as other animals like the gorillas, elephants and pangolins.”

Ssemanda says animal parts including skins, horns and blood, can be used to rid someone of a spiritual problem.

“If a patient is being haunted by a spirit or a ghost, and this ghost appears in dreams in form of, for instance a python swallowing them, the animal in this dream is the ghost’s choice of communication,” Ssemanda says. “The dream is scary and the animal is cruel, threatening the patient’s life. This could mean the dead is angry with the living and is demanding for something.”

Ssemanda says in cases that need the use of animal products, he treats his patients with pieces of the type of animal they seen in their dreams. If he uses an animal skin or python’s head, he says, he asks his ancestors for guidance on which plants or other items he should use. Then, he folds the plants and other items with the animal part and gives it all to the patient.

“Sometimes I will tell them to keep the skin or python under their beds, where they rest their heads, so the next time they’re visited by the ghosts in sleep, these spirits are counter-attacked by the python head, which the ghost will see as a relative or an equal,” Ssemanda says.

Sometimes, he tells the patients to take the animal parts to a gravesite.

“This ritual is meant (to) rest the dead, so they have peace in their eternal life and don’t come back from their spiritual world. This is done to create harmony between the dead and the living,” he says.

People who rely on traditional medicine and healing say the wildlife authority’s raids have made it difficult to get the products they need.

“I used to add lion fats in my food, or sometimes smear it on my skin to deal with the heat and pains in my pelvic and joints,” says Resty Nabakka, who consulted a traditional healer to manage pain. “But it’s hard now to access the fats, and I have gone back to relying on conventional western medicine, which I hate.”

Nabakka says she consulted with a traditional healer after taking antibiotics for a year, on the advice of medical doctors, to treat severe itching and joint pain throughout her body.

Ndawusi, the retailer, says he’s part of the lion’s clan, and the lion is the totem, or symbol, of his people.

“I would never kill it or support its killing because my traditions encourage me to protect my totem,” he says. “Without the lion’s existence, I would lack cultural identity. Even in our cultural duties, we are protecting these animals.”

Gessa says retailers who supply traditional healers can negotiate a better system with the wildlife authority that would allow some hunting of certain animals.

But Ssemanda and others involved in traditional healing still believe the wildlife authority has overstepped its bounds.

“Proper research should be done by the UWA before interfering with our activities,” he says.

 

Nakisanze Segawa, GPJ, translated some interviews from Luganda.