Pangolins and Traditional Healers in South Africa: Conservation at the Cultural Crossroads

In South Africa, the relationship between pangolins and traditional healing practitioners — known as sangomas and izinyanga — is centuries old, embedded in spiritual cosmology, medicinal knowledge systems, and the rhythms of rural life. It is also one of the most challenging dimensions of pangolin conservation, requiring conservationists to engage with cultural identity, post-apartheid equity, and community trust rather than simply with biology or law enforcement.

This is not a story of villains. It is a story of complexity: a species critically threatened by illegal trade, a healing tradition that is a fundamental part of South African society, and conservationists working to find pathways that protect pangolins without dismissing or criminalising indigenous culture.

The Cultural Significance of Pangolins in South African Tradition

Among many Nguni, Sotho, and Venda cultural traditions, the pangolin occupies a position of profound symbolic significance. Its rarity, its armoured appearance, and its habit of curling into a perfect ball when threatened have long made it an object of spiritual reverence. In some traditions, encountering a live pangolin is considered a potent omen — a sign that ancestors are communicating with the living. Historically, certain communities held the pangolin as a royal animal, associated with chiefs and spiritual authority.

Medicinal Uses in Traditional Practice

In the context of traditional medicine (known broadly as umuthi or muti), pangolin parts are attributed with a range of healing and protective properties. Pangolin scales, when burned and ground into ash, are incorporated into preparations said to bring good fortune, provide protection from enemies, enhance business success, and treat skin conditions. The fat of the pangolin has historically been used in topical preparations for joint pain and muscle ailments. In some traditions, possession of a pangolin scale is believed to ward off lightning.

The trade in pangolin parts through muthi markets — including the large Faraday market in Johannesburg and Warwick Market in Durban — has been documented by researchers at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the African Pangolin Working Group. A 2020 survey found pangolin scales and body parts available in multiple urban muthi markets, though increasingly less openly than in previous decades as enforcement has intensified.

Distinguishing Tradition from Commerce

A critical distinction that conservation practitioners have learned to make is between authentic traditional use embedded in spiritual practice and the commercial trade that exploits traditional frameworks to move pangolin products at scale. Many traditional healers who consume a small quantity of pangolin material for specific ceremonial purposes are not the same actors driving the mass-scale trafficking of pangolin scales into Asian markets. Conflating the two groups — as some early conservation campaigns did — generated hostility and closed doors that took years to reopen.

Research by Raymond Jansen and the African Pangolin Working Group has consistently found that the most significant driver of pangolin mortality in South Africa is not domestic traditional use but commercial poaching supplying the East Asian trade. Pangolins poached in South Africa frequently have their scales stripped and shipped to China or Vietnam, with local traditional use constituting a secondary and smaller market.

The Scale of the Problem

Temminck's ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) is the only pangolin species found in South Africa. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, though many researchers argue that the data supporting this classification is outdated and that actual population declines may justify an uplisting to Endangered. South Africa's pangolin population is estimated at somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 individuals — a wide range reflecting just how difficult these secretive, nocturnal animals are to survey.

Recorded mortality from all causes — electrocution on electric fences, road kills, poaching, and incidental capture — runs into the hundreds of animals annually. Poaching specifically for commercial trade has increased markedly since approximately 2010, coinciding with the global surge in demand from Asian markets. The South African Police Service and the Endangered Wildlife Trust have both documented a shift in the profile of pangolin poachers from opportunistic local hunters to organised criminal networks operating across provincial and national borders.

Conservation Approaches: Engaging Traditional Healers

The most effective conservation programmes working at the intersection of traditional healing and pangolin protection share a common approach: they begin with listening rather than lecturing, and they build relationships over years rather than expecting rapid behaviour change from top-down messaging.

The African Pangolin Working Group's Engagement Model

The African Pangolin Working Group (APWG), founded by Raymond Jansen, has developed a model of direct engagement with muthi market traders and traditional healer associations. Rather than approaching these communities as adversaries, APWG representatives — including some who themselves come from traditional healing backgrounds — have participated in discussions about the spiritual and cultural relationship with pangolins and have worked to understand which uses practitioners consider most important and least substitutable.

Through these conversations, the APWG has identified several key insights. First, many traditional healers did not know that pangolins were endangered, because their knowledge of the animal came from spiritual traditions rather than wildlife science. Second, some healers expressed genuine distress when informed of the decline, because the symbolic power of the pangolin in their tradition is specifically linked to its rarity and power — a concept closely connected to its existence in the world. Third, healers in many traditions expressed willingness to consider alternatives when these were presented respectfully and when the healers themselves were involved in developing substitutes, rather than having them imposed from outside.

The Role of the Traditional Healers' Associations

South Africa has several large umbrella bodies representing traditional healers, including the Traditional Healers Organisation (THO) and the Congress of Traditional Doctors of South Africa (CONTRALESA). These organisations have engaged with wildlife authorities and NGOs on the question of protected species in traditional medicine, and in some cases have issued voluntary guidance to their members discouraging trade in the most endangered species.

These engagements are politically sensitive because they touch on post-apartheid recognition of indigenous knowledge systems, which is a live policy issue in South Africa. The Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Act of 2019 and ongoing debates about the Traditional Health Practitioners Act have created a framework in which traditional healing is recognised as a legitimate profession, making it important for conservation organisations to engage formally with healer associations rather than treating traditional medicine as an underground activity.

Education and Alternatives

Some conservation organisations working in this space have explored whether plant-based or synthetic alternatives can substitute for pangolin scales in muthi preparations, building on the precedent set by campaigns to replace rhino horn with other keratinous materials. This approach requires careful cultural brokering — the efficacy of traditional medicines is often understood as inherent to the specific material rather than to a chemical property, meaning that a direct material substitute may not carry the same spiritual significance even if it is physically similar.

Education programmes have had more consistent success when they are delivered through trusted cultural channels — through healer associations, traditional leaders, and community radio — rather than through government agencies or international NGOs that may carry associations with colonial-era conservation enforcement.

Legal Framework and Its Limits

South Africa's National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEMBA, 2004) provides the strongest legal protection for pangolins. Temminck's ground pangolin is listed as an Endangered Protected Species under NEMBA's Threatened or Protected Species Regulations (TOPS), meaning that any form of possession, collection, trade, hunting, or harm requires a permit from provincial conservation authorities. In practice, permits for traditional healing purposes are almost never granted.

Enforcement of NEMBA is the responsibility of the South African Police Service, the Hawks (the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation), the National Prosecuting Authority, and provincial conservation agencies. High-profile prosecutions have resulted in multi-year prison sentences for commercial pangolin traffickers. However, enforcement at the level of individual muthi market traders has been more inconsistent, partly because prosecutorial resources are limited and partly because enforcement agencies have recognised that criminalising traditional healers without community buy-in is likely to be counterproductive.

Building Trust for Long-Term Change

The consensus emerging from two decades of work at this intersection is that lasting reduction in demand for pangolin parts within South African traditional medicine will require cultural change driven from within the healing community itself, supported — but not directed — by conservation organisations and government. The most important role for conservation NGOs may be to provide accurate information about population status, to facilitate dialogue between healers and pangolin experts, and to support healers who choose to advocate for pangolin protection within their own communities.

There are encouraging signs. Younger generations of traditional healers, increasingly urban and connected to global information networks, are more likely to be aware of extinction risk and to view sustainable practice as compatible with their healing identity. Healer associations that have taken public positions against pangolin trade have found that these positions are respected rather than opposed by their members. And in some communities, the cultural reverence for the pangolin has itself become a conservation asset — the belief that harming a pangolin brings bad fortune is a more powerful deterrent than any fine.

Conclusion

Pangolin conservation in South Africa cannot succeed by ignoring the traditional healing sector. The relationship between healers and pangolins is real, complex, and deeply rooted in culture. Conservation organisations that have engaged with this complexity — slowly, respectfully, and on the community's own terms — have made more progress than those that pursued enforcement-only strategies. The pangolin's survival in South Africa depends as much on relationships built around a sangoma's fire as it does on GPS transmitters and anti-poaching patrols.