Cultivation of honeybush (Cyclopia spp.) in neo-colonial and multispecies landscapes of South Africa

Abstract

The indigenous wild plants of Southern Africa are intertwined with human cultures, histories and livelihoods. By focusing on commercial cultivation of a wild plant, honeybush (Cyclopia spp.), an indigenous plant that is endemic to parts of South Africa, we discuss changing colonial relations of domination and alienation affecting its use by local communities. We draw from an interdisciplinary study of honeybush conducted in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa, which included archival research, life history interviews, participant observation and a review of honeybush cultivation science. Anna Tsing’s notion of non-scalability and a multispecies critique of plant domestication guides our analysis of the changing relations and approaches to honeybush use. We show the impact these changes exert on human and human-non-human relations. We conclude that the persistence of scalable projects in the commercial use of honeybush sustains and reconfigures relations that strengthen the alienation of (certain) humans from nature. Our interdisciplinary research highlights how historical violence continues to be subsumed in plant domestication and commercialisation.