Rapid Disappearance of Zimbabwe’s Medicinal Plants Leaves Women and Children Without Alternatives

A few meters outside Florence Munyama’s homestead in eastern Zimbabwe, the once perennial wetland has dried up, along with the small streams that used to flow from it.

Munyama’s homestead — which includes a main four-room house with asbestos in the ceiling, and a small, traditional grass-thatched kitchen hut — stands at the foot of a mountain. The homestead used to be surrounded by lush green vegetation, but years of climate-change-related drought has turned the landscape into a deadly brown tinderbox.

Munyama, 76, is an herbalist. She stares at the narrow dusty trails that now snake through the once lavish wetland. A few big trees, including a giant mahogany and a huge fig tree, stand just beyond her homestead; they look battered by years of severe droughts. The trees have somehow managed to survive the dry periods, but many unique plants that used to flourish here — including many medicinal herbs — have vanished.

That is a big problem for Munyama and a number of her neighbors. Many people in rural Zimbabwe still depend on medicinal herbs to treat various diseases, particularly ailments affecting young children.

Zimbabwe’s health care sector has suffered from years of neglect by the government. Health experts say that the country’s health care system has been affected by poor policies and a lack of qualified health personnel and funding. One 2013 study argues that traditional herbal medicines have been the most affordable and easily accessible source of treatment for resource-poor rural communities.

And, as is often the case in climate-related disasters, women have been hit hardest by the droughts in Zimbabwe. In most rural communities across the country, women are responsible for looking for food and clean water, as well as caring for children and carrying out household chores. What are they supposed to do now when their babies become ill?

The Impact of Climate Change on Health Care

From her small kitchen hut, Munyama said that herbal medicines play a critical role in promoting maternal and child health in her remote area, where access to modern facilities is limited. Treating children is, she says, something she has been doing since she was very young: “I treat different diseases affecting children using our traditional herbs.”

She has long used roots, leaves, barks, and flowers from various plants that have grown in the area to treat illnesses in children, such as diarrhea, pain from teething, skin problems, stomach flu, problems with babies’ fontanel — the soft tissues that hold the skull together as the brain grows — and fever. “These herbs help a lot,” Munyama said.

But, since 1992, climate change has caused ongoing and ever-worsening droughts in Zimbabwe. These have devastated local plant life, making obsolete the only true health care previously available to people outside of a city-centric, modern medical system.

The impact on communities like Munyama’s will be felt for generations.

Munyama is struggling to find the herbs she has long relied on and fears for her community’s future. “The plants have dried up completely,” she said. “At times, I have to walk very long distances to look for these herbs. Some of the herbs need a lot of water, and, without good rainwater in summer, the plants are not rejuvenating. We will be facing serious health problems with our children if we continue losing these plants.”

One important herb that has disappeared from the wetlands around Munyama’s homestead is the wild grape shrub. Root extracts from the plant have been used historically as an effective remedy for diarrhea and other stomach ailments.

Another herbalist from the same area, Veronica Mabvumbe, 66, said she was taught to use traditional herbs to treat diseases by her mother decades ago. “And today I’m now treating children and pregnant women using herbs,” she said. “I will also pass on this knowledge to my children.”

But Mabvumbe used to find many herbs on the banks of a river that passed through her village. Now the river, she said, dries up halfway through the drought season.

“At times,” she said, “I have to forage for specific herbs for hours without success. But we’re trying our best to continue using our traditional herbs to treat illnesses in children.”

David Mutambirwa, the executive director and founder of Mhakwe Heritage Foundation Trust — a Zimbabwe-based foundation advocating for the preservation of traditional culture — said that indigenous herbs have been used for centuries to treat various ailments with amazing success.

However, as medicinal plants dry up and disintegrate, Mutambirwa said that it is still possible to save the rural medicinal system from total collapse. Through traditional strategies such as permaculture, agroforestry, and sustainable agriculture, a natural regeneration of the environment could save the herbs from extinction.

But, he said: “There is need for capacity building among communities on the preservation, conservation of indigenous knowledge systems in order not only to mitigate the indiscriminate deforestation of indigenous trees, but to create resilience to droughts.”

Zimbabwe can also learn from other parts of the world, where experts are using in-situ and off-site conservations, natural reserves, wild nurseries, botanical gardens, and seed banks to preserve important indigenous plants.

Mabvumbe, for her part, remains determined about the future of herbal medicine in Zimbabwe.

“We will protect the herbs and knowledge of traditional medicines for future generations,” she said with a weary smile. “Herbal medicine knowledge will not die.”