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Herbalists’ claim that they have found a cure agains AIDS has been challenged or rejected by the scientific medecine. Traditional Healers believe that they have a role to play. And people listen to them.

THE SEARCH FOR AIDS CURE MALAWI'S HERBALISTS

The African Union declared 2001 - 2010 as an African decade for traditional medicine. Since the recognition of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Malawi in 1985, there have been notable efforts to address the issue through a health perspective by traditional healers in Malawi. This article has as its main objective to assess the input of two notable healers and how society at large has responded to their offers of a cure.
The Herbalists’ Association of Malawi president, Gangire Phiri, claimed in 2002 that some members of his association have found a cure for AIDS. However, health experts have dismissed the claim, saying what the herbalists cure are opportunistic of AIDS-related infections.
The president reacted by saying that “these are the people who are doing nothing on their part but waiting for foreign doctors to find the cure for them and yet they have the audacity to dismiss our claim.” He intimated that they had joined in the fight against AIDS because people have their eyes set on them (the herbalists) for an AIDS cure after medical doctors’ confession that they have failed to find the cure!

Herbalists in Focus

(a) G.B. Chisupe (d. 2005)
The habit of flocking to traditional healers to seek AIDS treatment is ever popular. In 1995 over 100,000 Malawians visited the herbalist, Goodson Billy Chisupe from Chikanama Village, T.A. Msamala, Liwonde, Machinga District, who claimed that the spirits of his ancestors had revealed to him a herb that could be used to prevent HIV infection and cure AIDS.
He wrote: “Since I was born I have never administered herbal medicine to anyone. But one day I was told by my ancestral spirit in a dream to take this tree, soak it in water and give it freely to people to drink. The medicine is for curing and preventing AIDS. I have already started helping the sick and those who are not sick”. Among other directives for the administration of the concoction, Chisupe stated that his ancestral spirits had told him that he alone and no other person would dispense it. It was to be given out free of charge, at his home and nowhere else and the dosage was to be one cup of tea per person. The ancestral spirits challenged that HIV positive patients should go for testing after drinking the concoction. Several observances were enjoined, among them were prohibitions against promiscuous behaviour and use of the same razor blades and injections. In 1995 one patient drank a full dosage of medicine which has been called “madzi a moyo” (water of life) but came to be popularly known as mchape, appeared with good news: “I had Aids, but now I am fine!” he claimed. Here started the news that mchape was a cure for AIDS and thousands were attracted. There was no scientific evidence that the patients were either HIV positive or negative at any time of their life. The response of the Ministry of Health and Population was swift. This included a press statement warning the public that there is still no drug to cure AIDS or a vaccine for the prevention of HIV infection. However, it made a commitment that the health personnel would work with Chisupe to evaluate the effectiveness of this herbal medication with respect to the claims he made.
As it turned out later, Chisupe refused to let the scientific evaluation of his claims take place. He charged that the report would be designed to discredit him, given that the results would not likely be released in his favour. He felt that even if the research results were to show that mchape killed HIV and cured AIDS, the Ministry of Health and Population would continue with its stand that there was no cure for AIDS in order to safeguard the jobs of its staff and donor funding to the Government. Therefore he became convinced that he could do his own research if sent the blood of AIDS patients with which he would mix mchape and show that the virus will die immediately. He did not trust the results of tests done in a government laboratory in his absence, although it was explained to him that he could refer the testing to an independent laboratory.
Starting from a magico - religious and rural background, he managed for a while, to draw to his Chikanama village, people from all walks of life, rank and file, even beyond our borders. They came to drink the mchape both either as a curative or preventive measure against AIDS for their own security. Although Government’s provision of amenities such as clean water, sanitation, a good road to the village and security through Police presence at Chikanama village was on humanitarian grounds, for many people this was seen as a recognition and endorsement of Chisupe’s credibility as a healer of AIDS. The drinking of mchape by people of high rank and file who came in government vehicles further boosted his image.
The insistence by the Health authorities that mchape should first be scientifically tested did not go well with the ordinary people. There are those who said that he should be given enough scope to try out his cure and others who accused them of jealousy. In the final analysis, Chisupe’s understanding and that of his herbalist colleagues such as Gangile Phiri that HIV is a virus whose death he could observe by mixing a patient’s blood and mchape puts him and the Government’s research team on two different levels of understanding: one based on belief and magic and another on international scientific principles. Which of these two predominates is dependent on the community’s perception of disease and its causation. At the present time there is no doubt as to which one predominates. Chisupe died a very poor man after nearly three years of illness early 2005, having left a legacy unparalled by any herbalist in modern Malawi.

(b) G.L. Kumbuyo
Following the decline of Chisupe’s mchape as a potential cure for AIDS from around 2003, the arrival in the country of the self-acclaimed inventor of chambe, the remedy for AIDS, George Liunde Kumbuyo, made a stir. This is because of the tug - of - war that went on between him and the Ministry of Health and Population. He went about opening clinics which were well - patronized by people from all walks of life. The Ministry of Health and Population once again refused to acknowledge chambe as cure for AIDS and remained defiant, forcing Kumbuyo to seek greener pastures in Botswana. However the International Traditional Medicine Council of Malawi in 2005 decided to work hand in hand with Kumbuyo’s Chambe HIV/AIDS Healing Scheme. The President of the Council, Grant Chipangula, declared: “We have only asked George Kumbuyo to reduce the power of the medicine because sometimes a person starts suffering again from the disease he has been cured of because of its power which re-awakens the disease.”
According to Kumbuyo, chambe drug is a concoction made from herbs found in Malawi and Namibia. He said: “My discovery of chambe is a solution to the failures by the elite medical world to find medication that regulates the immunity levels and viral load to the proportion required for one to live a healthy life.” He went on: “Three to four cups of 350 mls each of the concoction would resuscitate the life of the bed-ridden or terminally ill HIV / AIDs patient. When one drinks chambe, the drug fights the virus, not coat it as some medicines do. As a result, the virus in rendered incapacitated and is wiped out, thereby enabling the cells to multiply in the body and fight the diseases. He further alleged that soon after drinking chambe, the body responds to medication just like any other healthy person. Those who had lost body weight, regain it within a short period; the hair starts growing normally. The patient starts to eat, walk and perform simple household chores in just five days after drinking chambe.”
On the efficacy of the medicine, he said, “when people go for tests after receiving treatment from me, the HIV virus could not be traced.” But Malawi health officials strongly dispute Kumbuyo’s claims that chambe is a cure for AIDS before it has been scientifically tested.
Despite this negative and prohibitive response which has been hotly contested and debated in the local news media in the country, Kumbuyo has remained adamant in his claims, even to the extent of looking for greener pastures outside Malawi.

Concluding Observations
When Chisupe and Kumbuyo are compared, what they have in common is the claim that they have found the cure for AIDS, one through communication with his ancestors and the other from his knowledge of medicinal herbs. This claim has been challenged, if not rejected, by health officials in Malawi on the grounds that it has not been scientifically tested.
Chisupe refused to have the mchape tested while Kumbuyo failed to submit the certificate which he claims to have obtained from South Africa where he sold the chambe. Chisupe operated from a rural setting where magico-religious beliefs predominate and became known rather through person to person talk than the use of public media. He was the sole dispenser of his concoction in his village and did not have any outpost clinics. He did not charge any fee according to the directive of his ancestors’ spirits.
Kumbuyo, however, has the entrepreneural experience of operating in urban settings in Southern Africa and Malawi among the semi-elite where he has established a net-work of clinics which are publicized through the mass media. He charges fees to sustain his Chambe Healing Scheme. He has shown that he is articulate on the Chambe drug he administers, reflecting some basic knowledge of HIV / AIDS and human anatomy.
In the final analysis, traditional healers cannot be persuaded to believe that only the rich nations hold the key to solving the AIDS crisis. They feel that they have a role to play in finding a lasting solution. In the continued quest for HIV/AIDS cure, concerted efforts between scientific professions and traditional healers are to be encouraged.

J.C. Chakanza