The Venda Tribe

Massage and Indigenous peoples

In May of this year, two colleagues (from Resurgence Magazine & trust) and myself will be travelling to the Limpopo region of South Africa, to spend time with the Venda tribe.

Much of the region in which the Venda tribe lives is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which includes ancestral sites that the Venda people hold sacred -particularly the rivers and lakes.

Under the apartheid system, the land of the Venda people was designated a homeland, and so they had been largely unaffected by the widespread political and social upheavals of recent decades.

However, more recently - and as reported recently by the BBC (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10793664 ) - these sacred sites have come under the threat of development, from companies building tourist resorts, coal mines and so on. Many welcome the money that tourists to an impoverished region could bring, but one of the proposed developments would mean building a tourist chalet at the top of the Phiphidi waterfall – one of the important sacred sites of the Venda people.

There are many other connected issues – including the disrespect for the important role of women in rituals that rely on these sacred sites; the impact of Zimbabwean refugees on the region; the role of the government in protecting this site; and so on.

The purpose of our trip will be – through interviews, film, photos, and more – to highlight the issues and bring them to the attention of various media and government, as well as to provide hands-on support to the tribe, through community therapy – particularly amongst women; ecological and ancestral mapping to strengthen the tribes own identity; sharing various educational techniques; and so on.

Most importantly I have been invited by an elder of the tribe Mphatheleni Makaulule (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10866997) to share in massage with the women of the tribe, it has been her dream, her vision for this to happen. I am a trained massage therapist myself and love to share this with others. Without language we can still communicate through touch, with a look, with intention and find the "stillness", the "space" where life ebbs and falls.