Incubated within the depths of the mountain’s womb, I watched myself being cared for by an unknown figure who was cleansing me with sacred waters. The man introduced himself as a member of my bloodline as a means to distinguish himself from other Spirit beings. This astral performance was intended to purify and fortify my spirit to endure the hardships of the physical world. The ritual ended with the instruction, “Kumele uyolanda amanzi ozalwa,” which directly translates from isiXhosa as, “You must retrieve your birthing waters.” How perplexed I was by this directive, because where was I to locate these elusive waters? I had parted with them decades before when I vacated my prenatal chambers. My uncertainty on how to decipher this symbolic dream has sent me seeking in rivers, mountains, and the deep.
The name bestowed upon me at birth in this dimension is Lamlela. In isiXhosa, the name means to intercede. To mediate for those silenced and marginalised, but also to bridge between physical and spirit realms. Born to be a human bridge. A conduit. My call and purpose were fated long before I crossed the threshold, but this name sealed it. A recurring anxiety is what will happen when I eventually encounter sacred spaces with restricted access. Structural barriers in the form of private property rights and exclusionary conservation legislation that stigmatise ethnoecological connections are the central mechanisms that could restrict my access to culturally significant natural spaces. It is unsettling how conservation is mobilised to shift accountability for degraded biodiversity rooted in colonial extraction as the liability of Indigenous peoples. Disrupted people-nature connections resulting from restricted access can have negative implications on identity formation and well-being.
In many Indigenous worldviews, the well-being of individuals is relationally determined by the quality of relationships between the self, community, and nature.[1] By consolidating fragmented relationships with my heritage, the land, and its Beings, I seek to replenish my life force. On my journey to self, I am relearning and reviving long neglected biocultural practices. Biocultural heritage encompasses ritual, ceremony, traditional knowledge, and innovations dependent on ecological components.[2] So far, this has encompassed the use of medicinal plants. In my personal practice, I mostly work with dried impepho (Helichrysum spp.) as a smudge to invoke the Spirit and connect with the other sides. It can also be consumed as tea to promote tranquillity and ancestral dreams, while others combine the residual ash from smudging with bath salts to fortify the auric field.
I purchase these plants from informal traditional medicine markets around Cape Town. They are often traded by Sakmanne, a cultural group with creolised Rastafari, Indigenous Khoi, and San identities, who live an ascetic lifestyle.[3] The name refers to the hessian garments they wear made from sacks.[4] My experiences during these exchanges are uncomfortable in most instances and can be traced to personal inner conflict. Tensions between conservation objectives and cultural needs are highlighted here. The discomfort emphasises how stigmatisation of biocultural practices can negatively affect holistic well-being as conceptualised in Indigenous worldviews. In reclaiming heritage practices, the mental and emotional toll of negotiating contemporary urban identities and tradition can ironically deplete a sense of well-being. Wild harvesting medicinal plants in many nature reserves and national parks around the city is prohibited without formal permits. The criminalisation of culturally significant wild plant harvesting raises questions of legality pertaining to these exchanges. Paradoxically, in my quest to heal through reconnecting with medicinal plants, my well-being is compromised by cognitive dissonance during these exchanges.
[Image description: The photo shows a hand holding the bottom of a dried plant called impehpo, used as local medicine in Cape Town, South Africa.]
Intercultural exchanges are fascinating to me in these spaces, specifically the creolisation of cultures in urban settings. Even with disparate ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds, there are interdependent practices which are integral in shaping distinct identities. Cross-cultural exchanges are not novel; Khoi, San, and Xhosa communities exchanged traditional medicinal knowledge as early as the sixteenth century.[5] These exchanges perfectly encapsulate biocultural practices as dynamic, adaptive, and transformative processes, unbound to temporal and spatial boundaries. Man-made boundaries are arbitrary for the spirit, but humans have to navigate complicated territory in reclaiming what has been lost and stolen.
Land use in South Africa is highly contested, a legacy of the violent dispossession of its Indigenous peoples.[6] Natural spaces in Cape Town are often racialised, with prioritised uses for recreational activities perceived to be neutral, such as fitness and tourism that are dominated by White bodies and tourists alike. It is a colonial fantasy destination for any seekers of windows into the past. I feel unspoken discomfort when I implant myself in these spaces, more especially when performing ritual and ceremony. An intruder. Othered in my home. A recent headline of “The Mountain 12” reported that individuals from various Indigenous Khoi and San groups were arrested in 2021 on Table Mountain for “trespassing” while conducting ritual and ceremony at a sacred site. I am reminded that formalisation of disrupted interactions between Indigenous peoples and nature began as early as 1503, with the change of the mountain’s Indigenous name Hoerikwaggo (Mountain in the Sea) to Taboa da caba (Table of the Cape) by the Portuguese.[7] Militarised conservation on the mountain as a UNESCO World Heritage site continues to perpetuate the violence of displacement and dispossession that Indigenous peoples experience of their biocultural heritage. This raises critical questions: which aspects of heritage matter to whom and what values are reinforced through formal biodiversity protection strategies?
Conservation praxis rooted in Western traditions that create a dichotomy between people and nature can be a traumatic trigger among Indigenous communities, while simultaneously legitimising hegemonic identities. Decolonial transformation of conservation practices is urgently needed, as conventional conservation reinforces the disruption and repression of Indigenous peoples’ relationship to nature, self, and community. Further, it overlooks how Indigenous communities have lived intimately with nature through implementing environmental stewardship principles such as harvesting taboos. Harvesting medicinal plants and engaging with nature in traditional Xhosa contexts are governed by traditional protocols, such as requesting permission from nature deities; offerings of silver coins, tobacco, and libations; and cultural taboos that prevent harvesting at certain sites, specific times, or particular vegetation parts. In negotiating biodiversity objectives and human demands, the inclusion of Indigenous voices embedded in complex social-ecological systems should be prioritised to restore dignity and well-being.
Restitution processes should be critically engaged and reflected upon to redress the injustices of the past with meaningful anticolonial action. This should go beyond material transfers and be complemented by the transfer of symbolic and political power to subordinated groups. For instance, the formal acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples’ relationships to the land with signage in protected areas to educate the public, and remove stigmatisation of biocultural practices. This requires legislation to formally recognise biocultural practices as legitimate and remove structural barriers that prevent access to nature, especially in an urban context where customary governance structures do not exist. Indigenous communities should also be represented in environmental governance structures, such as integrated management committees together with public engagements that promote intercultural exchange.
After three years had passed, I finally arrived at a more meaningful interpretation of those words given to me in the cave. A more accurate understanding of the metaphor is, “You must retrieve the Primordial Waters.” I landed on its true essence from reading Maria Szepes’ Red Lion, where she describes the metaphysical concept of Prima Materia. It became clear that Prima Materia, life’s primary material, was analogous with birthing waters as the first waters. “Amanzi ozalwa” were in the same sense Primordial Waters. The universal waters of origin. Water as a symbol of time, knowledge, and collective memory. Purity, truth, and justice are elements endemic to the these waters. To retrieve the Primordial Waters is to go back in time. By looking to the past, we recollect and reconnect with experiences that inform the present and guide the future. I was being instructed in ancestral dreamscapes not only to retrace my earthly lineage, but also to seek my universal origins through a reawakening project to reconnect and restore heritage practices.
Decolonising knowledge and resisting epistemic violence through transformative academic research practices is my current mission. One of the ways I am doing this is by including ancestral communication and gratitude rituals as expressions of Indigenous axiologies to complement my formal research ethics. I am also prioritising intuition and ancestral guidance as valuable epistemological foundations in academic research. My transdisciplinary approach encompasses creative methods through clay-work as a vessel for expressing tacit knowledge, linking the spiritual essence of land with theory. For people of the land, nature is a portal to reach beyond. We encounter our ancestors in the flora and fauna; it is where we commune and replenish vital forces. We see and find ourselves in nature. There’s no distinction between “we” and “it.” We are it.
The Primordial Waters symbolise the reclamation of systems, relationships, and identities disrupted by colonialism. Retrieving the Primordial Waters requires collective effort from all to reconcile enforced society-nature separation. It remains uncertain how heritage will adapt to intensified social-ecological disruptions, but it is clear that biocultural continuity will require supportive anticolonial policy and legislation. In honouring ancestral instruction and the name given to me, I reconnect with my heritage as resistance against imperial legacy and to restore collective well-being.
[1] Danielle Johnson, Meg Parsons and Karen Fisher, “Engaging Indigenous perspectives on health, wellbeing and climate change. A new research agenda for holistic climate action in Aotearoa and beyond,” Local Environment 26, no. 4 (2021): 477-503.
[2]Michael Gavin, Joe McCarter, Aroha Mead, Fikret Berkes, John R. Stepp, Debora Peterson & Ruifei Tang, “Defining biocultural approaches to conservation,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 30, no. 3 (2015): 140-145.
[3] Lennox Edward Olivier, “Rastafari bushdoctors and the challenges of transforming nature conservation in the Boland area” (PhD diss., Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University, 2012), https://scholar.sun.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/5148d24a-c3dc-4ea5-b82d-a5fd378eaf2d/content.
[4] Olivier, “Rastafari bushdoctors.”
[5] Lisa Aston Philander, Nokwanda Makhunga & Karen Esler, “The informal trade of medicinal plants by Rastafari bush doctors in the Western Cape of South Africa,” Economic Botany 68, no. 3 (2014): 303-315.
[6] Thembela Kepe, “From the colonial Doctrine of Discovery to contemporary land grabs,” Routledge Handbook of Global and Land Resource Grabbing 1 (2023): 21-32.
[7] Gareth Haysom and Alison Pulker, “State of City Food System Report: Cape Town,” AfriFOODlinks project, Cape Town, South Africa (2024).
*Cover image by the author.
[Cover image description: A landscape with a pool of still, translucent water surrounded by rocky boulders and the mountains in the background.]
Edited by Caroline Kreysel, reviewed by Emily Webster.