I wanted to join the Madagascar Covid-19 Organic discourse a few weeks ago, if only because we East Africans are already in it. Tanzania represented us by ordering a consignment of Covid-19 Organic CVO, a herbal preparation that the Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina launched in Antananarivo on April 20, with the claim that it could treat and prevent the dreaded pandemic infection.
I held back, however, because in my incurable and stubborn optimism, I hoped that reports of the use and effectiveness of the product would soon come from the many countries that had ordered it, and that these would render the arguments unnecessary. Up to now, however, I have not heard a word from Tanzania or any of the half dozen or so other African countries that imported Covid-19 Organic CVO, regarding its impact on their patients.
But I got back on to the Malagasy Covid-19 Organic story when I heard that President Rajoelina had sacked his minister of education because of her attempts to sweeten the controversial dawa. The president has decreed, you see, that the “medicine” should be taken by all schoolchildren, as a precautionary measure (read “vaccine”) against the coronavirus.
Madame Rijasoa Andriamanana, the minister, planned to buy some lollipops and give one to each schoolchild every time they had to take a dose of the bitter CVO. The president responded by sacking her, on grounds of wastefulness and extravagance!
That story relates to the three things that particularly struck me about the Covid-19 Organic phenomenon. The first was the prominence of the president in the promotion of this product. The second was the reaction of the medical establishment, including the World Health Organisation (WHO). Thirdly, and equally significantly, was the response of other African countries to the Malagasy revelation.
Regarding President Rajoelina’s role in the launch and promotion of Covid-19 Organic, and his vigorous defence of it in the media (in appetisingly sonorous French), I thought it was commendable. Indeed, it corresponds to the proactive line adopted by many of our top leaders leading the fight against the horrendous pandemic. It also shames those “shauri ya Mungu” (it is up to God) leaders who have preferred to remain indifferent or even passive, abandoning their people to the vicissitudes of fate.
The catch, however, lies in how far the political leaders should go in making the fight their own. Much as we accept their spokesperson role, our leaders should guard against over-personalising or even monopolising their interventions. When it comes to matters technical and scientific, should we not better leave them to the experts to whom they belong?
That said, however, we have to add that science itself, specifically Western-style medical science in this case, should not arrogate to itself the monopoly of pontificating about anything and everything concerning our lives and health. In the case of the Malagasy Covid-19 Organic, the WHO’s immediate reaction was to “warn” the populace against it.
They, and other conventional medical authorities, of course had apparently sound reasons for their stand. As far as they were concerned, there was no known cure for Covid-19. Secondly, the Malagasy preparation had not undergone all the standard international procedures of analysing, trying, testing, evaluation and approval expected of any medical product today.
That said, we ordinary people, whose lives are always on the line in every health situation, make an appeal to the learned doctors of the conventional “European” medical profession. Do, please, use your vast and scientific knowledge to treat and heal us and we will be grateful. But, please, do not be too cavalier, contemptuous and dismissive of traditional indigenous knowledge and wisdom.
Nguvu Kikongwe (Ancient Strength), a character in my play A Hole in the Sky, praises modern doctors for their knowledge but complains that their main shortcoming is their assumption that “what they don’t know does not exist”. Millennia of knowledge, research, experiment and experience lie behind African traditional medicine (ATM), on which, I assume, products like Covid-19 Organic CVO are based.
But there is a more insidious element in the thinking and attitudes of most of us “modern, educated” people (the Ocols of Okot p’Bitek’s Songs). We were, and we continue to be, brainwashed with the colonial, Eurocentric and supremacist propaganda that everything African is primitive, pagan and backward. Even the language we use routinely reflects this colonial hangover mentality. We call our peoples “tribes”, their languages “dialects”, their healers “witchdoctors” and their medicines “concoctions”.
Indeed, this is the line of attack adopted by President Rajoelina in his defence of Covid-19 Organic CVO. His argument was that the high-handed and summary dismissal of the Malagasy offer as “ineffective” smacked of racist and colonial prejudice.
I am not taking sides with either viewpoint in this argument. I certainly would not recommend that anyone go out there and gulp down Covid-19 Organic, even if I were qualified to do so. But neither would I dismiss it as worthless. The sensible approach is to analyse it systematically and objectively, examine its historical record, and assess its efficacy, if any. Then authoritative pronouncements can follow.
I was a little surprised at the readiness with which African countries accepted and ordered Covid-19 Organic. But on second thoughts I realise there were two main reasons why they responded like this.
Apart from the infectious persuasiveness of Monsieur Rajoelina, most African leaders understand the dire necessity of immediate and fast action, however tentative, in the face of the coronavirus pestilence.
More significantly, however, most Africans believe and know from experience that a number of African treatments work. Many of us have been raised and sustained as much on home-made herbal preparations as on “European” medicines, even where these were readily available. There is, thus, a deep-seated trust in many of us that our indigenous treatments can help manage the challenges that we face. This is by no means rejecting other available medicines and procedures.
The battle against the coronavirus is a struggle to be fought on all fronts and with all the weapons that we have.