ReConstructing Discourses on African Medicinal Knowledge in the Context of Contemporary Healthcare Systems

Notwane-Skosana, Israel

ReConstructing Discourses on African Medicinal Knowledge in the Context of Contemporary Healthcare Systems

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Environmental Humanities

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

African medicinal knowledge endures as a living archive of cultural, ecological, and intellectual sophistication. This study explores how such knowledge, grounded in Afrocentric epistemologies, interacts with scientific and legal frameworks that define legitimacy, ownership, and value. Through an interpretive, theory-driven analysis of secondary data, the research examines two emblematic case studies, Sutherlandia frutescens and Pelargonium sidoides, to trace the intersections of law, science, and ecology in shaping African medicinal knowledge production. Drawing on Foucault's concept of biopolitics, Institutional Theory, and the Capitalocene framework, the study investigates how Afrocentric systems are negotiated, reconstituted, and often constrained within global healthcare and bioeconomic structures. The Sutherlandia case highlights the epistemological tension between relational healing and the reductionism of laboratory science, while the Pelargonium case exposes the juridical and ethical dilemmas of bioprospecting and intellectual property through the Masakhane community's resistance to Schwabe Pharmaceuticals. Together, these cases reveal Afrocentric knowledge as both resilient and contested, continually reshaped through encounters with institutional power and market imperatives. The research uses thematic and content analysis supported by NVivo-assisted coding to interpret patterns across legal, scientific, and cultural narratives. Findings show that Afrocentric medicinal knowledge remains central to global discussions on health and sustainability yet is restricted by structures privileging Western epistemic norms. A polylogical framework is proposed as a pathway for coexistence between diverse knowledge systems without hierarchy. Language is treated not only as a medium but as a site of epistemic negotiation, signalling how meaning and terminology influence the production and validation of knowledge. Through this lens, the study advances an inclusive approach to governing medicinal knowledge, one that aligns equity with the cultural and ecological relationships sustaining it.