Inaugural Lecture for John Spencer Professorship in African Studies, Jacob Tropp

The Challenges of “Traditional” Healing in South Africa’s Colonial Moment

Since the ending of apartheid in 1994, intense public debates have erupted over the role of “traditional” healing in contemporary South African society. Despite the broadly accepted goals of undoing inherited state policies of the colonial and apartheid past that discriminated against Africans’ diverse healing systems and practices, there are still many unresolved questions regarding how to formally define, regulate, and incorporate “traditional” healing systems into the country’s existing health care framework. This lecture provides some longer-term historical reflections on the making of these contemporary dilemmas, focusing on the initial colonial takeover of African societies in one significant region of South Africa – the Eastern Cape – and the conflicts that surrounded the colonial state’s formative attempts to define and regulate Africans’ healing practices.