Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Zimbabwe’s tree planting campaign is an important part of the national conservation programme whose objective is to conserve natural resources that can be depleted by irresponsible management, usage or exploitation.

Such resources include elephants, rhinoceros, buffaloes, leopards and lions, the so-called Big Five.

The campaign is an aspect of a global attempt to preserve trees, particularly medicinal plants most of which grow in South America’s Amazon River rain forests, those of central Africa’s Congo river, and those growing along that water ways tributaries, and also medicinal treesgrowing in the monsoon rain jungles in the Indian sub-continent.

In Zimbabwe, the medicinal importance of some plants was highlighted by Dr Herbert Ushewokunze while he was the country’s Minister of Health in the first decade of our national independence.

Some members of the Zimbabwe National Healers’ Association (Zinatha) were very much attracted by Dr Ushewokunze’s pro-traditional medicine stance, and suggested that some botanical gardens for exclusively medicinal plants be established in some of the country’s regions.

Those gardens would have been planted with mostly, if not exclusively, lower plants to the exclusion of higher plants such as trees, and would have been located in urban and peri-urban areas.

That brilliant idea was not implemented most probably because of lack of financial support.

This article looks at the vital importance of the conservation of medicinal trees. We should realise and accept that most of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people depend on traditional herbs for the alleviation of pains or aches, and for the curing of diseases such as dental caries, diarrhoea, and for the treatment of some of their livestock and pets.

Some people resort to religious services for faith healing, and some go or are taken to clinics and or hospitals where they are given prescriptive or other pharmaceutical medicine or medicines some, if not many, of which are derived from either leaves, barks, roots, stems, flowers or fruits of some trees, or are synthetic products whose formulae are based on the chemical components of particular trees.

While it is generally true that some medicines are extracted from amphibians or reptiles, snakes or lizards, insects or birds some wild animals or from some fish, it is patently true that most are from plants, hence the siNdebele saying by herbalists, “Ngizakunika izihlahla”, the literal translation of which is, “I will give you trees” literally to mean, in fact, “I will give you medicines”.

Similarly, in TjiKalanga herbalists “Ndowo kupa miti” which literally means the same as in siNdebele, “I will give you trees”, but, in fact, it means “I will give you medicines”.

The destruction of trees is caused worldwide by, among other factors, the rapid population increase, resulting in the clearing of forests to create adequate living space for the additional population. According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) 1986 demographic estimates, the world population may reach about 7.7 billion in 2020, that is just about two years hence.

In addition to spawning poverty particularly in Third World nations, large populations unavoidably cause deforestation to create fields and living space.

It is because of this fact that in addition to the national tree planting campaign, it would serve Zimbabwe a very useful purpose for some of its universities to introduce faculties of botany one of whose subjects could be “ethnobotany”, a reference to how various local communities depend on local vegetation for their survival; a science that is akin to human ecology except that its emphasis is on the relationship between people and plants rather than between people and the general environment.

One would suggest that Lupane State University could benefit the nation a great deal by establishing such a faculty because of its geographical proximity to the Zambezi River and to two or three of that river’s tributaries along which grow what could be scientifically interesting medicinal tree species.

That institution could closely liaise with all Zimbabwean universities that have medical schools, as well as those in such countries as China, India and the United States where there have been ethnobotanical studies and researches for many decades.

An ethnobotanical garden could sooner or later export some of its products especially to oriental countries where traditional medicine is widely used.

The Sadc region, especially South Africa’s Kwazulu Natal Province and Swaziland, could undoubtedly become some of the major importers of such raw traditional medicine due to the pride they show in their ethnic culture particularly through their medical beliefs and practices.

Zinatha leaders can serve their organisation well if they could promote this idea; that is the establishment of an ethnobotanical garden at the LSU.

They can begin by consulting the appropriate Lupane region’s councils, traditional and parliamentary leadership so that the project can be procedurally presented to the relevant national authorities.

The establishment of such a botanical garden could be handled, of course, by the LSU in close consultation with the Health Ministry and that responsible for the environment.

Inevitable steps would include identification of the medicinal trees, something that could be done through research among the people of Lupane, the Tonga people of Binga, the Nambyas of Hwange, and Zinatha members themselves.

Identification could include the recording of the names of the trees by qualified scientists to produce a register to be used in the next stage, the verification stage.

At that stage, the aim would be to certify that the trees indeed have preventive or curative medical properties they are said to possess.

The final stage would be to plant the trees in a soil that would have, of course, been analysed by soil scientists to establish its suitability for such trees.

That ethnobotany garden could serve Zimbabwe for generations both medicinally and economically, medicinally as a source of raw medical supplies and economically as a source of export earnings.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]