The SADC Unified Ancestors, Traditional Healers and Practitioners of South Africa organisation on Friday, called for traditional healers to stop assisting poachers with ‘muti’.

On Friday, during a briefing at the Kruger National Park, the President of the organisation, Dr Sylvester Hlati said the traditional healers awareness campaign to fight rhino poaching was initiated in 2012 after they noticed that a number of poachers were found with muti in their possession.

“Muti can do good things and bad things, there is muti that can make a magistrate sleep and a case can be postponed many times. We said why can’t you make muti to make poachers sleep,” Hlati said.

“We need to regulate this so we know who’s doing what.”

Hlati said that traditional healers were getting murdered if the poachers who visited them were not successful.

Some traditional healers make a small cloth with muti on it for the poacher to put around their waist or neck, something to bath with or to inject in their body and an animal will think the person is also an animal.

Around seven poachers have been arrested through the campaign but the lack of financial support made it difficult for them to reach more villages.

Hlati said that they were relying on the private sector to assist them with travelling to more communities around Africa to educate the healers on the dangers of assisting poachers and the impact it has on the environment and the country.

“It’s unfortunate that some of our practitioners are assisting poachers, they have muti that will prevent rhinos and lions from being violent towards them.”

He said that the campaign was successful in educating the traditional healers in understanding why they should not work with poachers.

During the campaign healers were told to accept someone who notifies them that they need ‘muti’ for poaching to consult with them, then call the police when the person arrives.

“Many of them didn’t like the idea and said that I was successful and didn’t need money,” Hlati said.

“The reason they do it is because they don’t have knowledge and after sometime they understood the damage they were doing. If you use muti wrong you kill animals and people.”

Hlati stressed that traditional healers were not working with poachers for ingredients for making muti as they were in an agreement with Sanparks

“Traditional healers don’t need big portions of animal fat or bones, we have an agreement with the Kruger National Park to give us what we require from animals that have died naturally.”