Poisonous plants, pastoral knowledge and perceptions of environmental change in South Africa, c. 1880-1940

Environment and History

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 307-332

  Brown, Karen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Degradation; Environmental change; Livestock; Overstocking; Plant poisonings; South Africa; Veterinary science

Indexed keywords

ECOTOXICOLOGY; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; GRASSLAND; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; LIVESTOCK FARMING; POISONING;

AFRICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

ANIMALIA;

EID: 34548431760     PISSN: 09673407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3197/096734007X228291     Document Type: Article

References (133)

1. I would like to thank William Beinart, Daniel Gilfoyle, Daniel Rubenstein and Anthonie Snijders, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper. Particular thanks go to Theuns Naudé for taking me around the Toxicology Department at Onderstepoort and for clarifying some of the complexities of toxicoses in South Africa. Thanks too go to the Wellcome Trust for funding my postdoctoral studies, from which this paper is drawn.
2. John Quin to Petrus du Toit, undated report, Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute Archive (hereafter OVRIA), 63, 10/4/2/1, 9. The date of the visit was 3 January 1934. Petrus du Toit was Director of Veterinary Services from 1927 to 1948, having succeeded the bacteriologist Arnold Theiler who held that position from 1910-27.
3. T. S. Kellerman, J. A. W. Coetzer, T. W. Naudé and C. J. Botha, Plant Poisonings and Mycotoxicoses of Livestock in Southern Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 2005) is the most detailed and latest account for South Africa.
4. Lance van Sittert, '"The Seed Blows About in Every Breeze": Noxious Weed Eradication in the Cape Colony, 1860-1909', Journal of Southern African Studies (hereafter JSAS) 26, 4 (2000): 655-74;
5. William Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 122-3, 266-303.
6. Douw Steyn, The Toxicology of Plants in South Africa (Johannesburg: Central News Agency, 1934), 70.
7. Steyn, Toxicology of Plants in South Africa, 148.
8. Daniel Gilfoyle, 'Veterinary Research and the African Rinderpest Epizootic: The Cape Colony, 1896-1898', JSAS 29, 1 (2003): 133-54;
9. Daniel Gilfoyle, 'A Swiss Veterinary Scientist in South Africa: Arnold Theiler and the explication of lamsiekte in cattle', (unpublished paper presented at the conference on 'Imperial Culture in Countxies without Colonies', University of Basle, 23-25 October 2003);
10. Daniel Gilfoyle, 'Veterinary Immunology as Colonial Science: Method and Quantification in the Investigation of Horsesickness in South Africa, c. 1905-1945', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 61, 1 (2006): 26-65.
11. Andrew Smith, A Contribution to South African Materia Medica (Cape Town: J. C. Juta & Co., 1895);
12. John M. Watt and Maria Breyer-Brandwijk, Medicinal and Poisonous Plants of Southern Africa (Edinburgh: E & S Livingstone, 1932).
13. Daniel Gilfoyle, 'Veterinary Science and Public Policy at the Cape 1877-1910' (D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 2002);
14. Karen Brown, 'From Ubombo to Mkhuzi: Disease, Ecology and the Control of Bovine Trypanosomosis (Nagana) in KwaZulu Natal' (unpublished seminar paper presented at UNISA, Oxford and SOAS, October-November 2004).
15. See for example, William M. Macmillan, The South African Agrarian Problem and its Historical Development (Johannesburg: Central News Agency, 1919), 43-4, 64-6.
16. William Beinart, 'Transhumance, Animal Diseases and the Environment in the Cape South Africa', South African Historical Journal, forthcoming.
17. For fencing, Sean Archer, 'Technology and Ecology in the Karoo: A Century of Windmills, Wire and Changing Farming Practice', JSAS 26, 4 (2000): 675-96
18. Lance van Sittert, 'Holding the Line: The Rural Enclosure Movement in the Cape Colony, c. 1865-1910', Journal of African History 43 (2002): 95-118.
19. UG32-1912, Union Census 1911, 1216-17; UG-1926, Agricultural Census No. 7, 22; UG49-1958, Report on Agricultural and Pastoral Production 1954-55, 121, 126, 134.
20. See for example, William Beinart, 'Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development: a Southern African Exploration, 1900-1960', JSAS 11 (October 1984): 52-83;
21. Peter Delius and Stefan Schirmer, 'Soil Conservation in a Racially Ordered Society: South Africa 1930-70', JSAS 26, 4 (2000): 720-42;
22. Belinda Dodson, 'Above Politics? Soil Conservation in 1940s South Africa', South African Historical Journal 50 (May 2004): 49-64;
23. Belinda Dodson, 'A Soil Conservation Safari: Hugh Bennett's 1944 Visit to South Africa', Environment and History 11 (February 2005): 35-54;
24. William Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), especially chapters 7, 10, 11.
25. For studies into microbes and vaccine technologies in Europe, see for example, Gerald Geisson, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995);
26. Thomas Brock, Robert Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology (Madison: Science Tech Publishers, 1988);
27. Michael Worboys, Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain 1865-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
28. Jotello F. Soga, 'Disease Nenta in Goats', Agricultural Journal of the Cape of Good Hope (hereafter AJCGH) 3 (29 January 1891): 140-42;
29. Duncan Hutcheon, 'Nenta', AJCGH 14 (8 June 1899): 862-73.
30. By the 1930s, veterinarians had linked other species of Cotyledon with the symptoms of krimpsiekte, see Douw Steyn, Toxicology of Plants, 220-30.
31. Joseph Burtt Davy, 'Cattle Poisons of the Transvaal', Transvaal Agricultural Journal 2 (October 1903): 96-101;
32. A. Mogg (Ecologist), 'Some Poisonous Plants of South Africa', Farming in South Africa (hereafter FSA) 5 (December 1930): 453-4.
33. 'Departmental Activities Veterinary Education and Research', Journal of the Department of Agriculture 3 (July 1921): 19-20;
34. Arnold Theiler, Petrus du Toit and David Mitchell, 'Gousiekte in Sheep', Ninth and Tenth Report of the Director of Veterinary Services, 1923: 10-47.
35. Duncan Hutcheon, 'The Poisoning of Stock by Tulp', AJCGH 17 (5 July 1900): 84-9;
36. Duncan Hutcheon, 'The Poisoning of Stock', AJCGH 23 (1 October 1903): 390-99;
37. Report by James Webb (Natal veterinarian), 'Vegetable Poisoning Amongst Stock in Natal', 1904, Pietermaritzburg Archive Repository, 44, 2106/04.
38. H.H. Klette, 'Farmyard Problems: Tulp Poisoning', Farmers Weekly (hereafter FW) 50 (25 December 1935): 1159. (In 1990s, toxicologists were able to explain this by showing that animals developed an aversion to tulp if given in a sub-lethal dose, because of its unpleasant effects. Thanks to Theuns Naudé for this explanation).
39. W. Pakeman to Duncan Hutcheon, 25 October 1905, Cape Archives, CVS, 1/ 11, 24.
40. Walter C. Muenscher, Poisonous Plants of the United States (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1940) 134-6, 162-5.
41. For Tribulus in East Africa see Bernard Verdcourt and E.C. Trump, Common Poisonous Plants of East Africa (London: Collins, 1969), 33.
42. Theiler et al., 'Gousiekte in Sheep', 10.
43. Paul Cranefield, Science and Empire: East Coast Fever in Rhodesia and the Transvaal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
44. Gilfoyle, 'Veterinary Science and Public Policy at the Cape';
45. Gilfoyle, 'Veterinary Research and the African Rinderpest Epizootic'.
46. Karen Brown, 'Tropical Medicine and Animal Diseases: Onderstepoort and the Development of Veterinary Science in South Africa 1908-1950', JSAS 31, 3 (2005): 513-29.
47. A. Pagan to Petrus du Toit, 22 June 1935, OVRIA, 64, 10/4/3/2, 1;
48. John Nicol (senior veterinary surgeon in the Transkei and Eastern Cape) to Petrus du Toit, 21 September 1939, OVRIA, 39, 7/8/2, 36.
49. Herbert Curson, 'Some Little Known South African Poisonous Plants and their Effects', Royal College of Veterinary Surgeon's Thesis 1926 (Thanks to Stephan Vogel for a copy of this);
50. Douw Steyn, Vergiftiging van Mens en Dier met Gifplante, Voedsel en Drinlovater (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, BPK, 1949), v.
51. Arnold Theiler, 'Geeldikkop in Sheep', Seventh and Eighth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Research, April 1918, 7.
52. For example, Gilles de Kock, Petrus. du Toit and Douw Steyn, ' Studies on the Aetiology of Dunsiekte or Enzootic Liver Disease of Equines in South Africa', Seventeenth Report of the Director of Veterinary Services and Animal Industry, August 1931, 617-44.
53. John Quin, 'Further Investigations into Geeldikkop (Tribulosis Ovis)', Fifteenth Annual Report of the Director of Veterinary Services, 1929: 765-7;
54. John Quin to Petrus du Toit, undated report 1934, OVRIA, 63, 10/4/2/1, 9;
55. Claude Rimington, 'Photosensitization Syndromes due to Porphyrins in Animals and Man', Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association (hereafter JSAVMA) 36 (September 1965): 313-18.
56. John Quin's report to Petrus du Toit, February 1931, OVRIA, 63, 10/4/2/ 1, 1.
57. Ibid.
58. For example, Dawn Nell, 'For the Public Benefit: Livestock Statistics and Expertise in the Late Nineteenth Century Cape Colony 1850-1900', in Saul Dubow (ed.), Science and Society in Southern Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000): 100-115;
59. Mordechai Tamarkin, 'Flock and Volk: Ecology, Culture, Identity and Politics among Cape Afrikaner Stock Farmers in the Late Nineteenth Century' (paper presented at the Conference on 'African Environments, Past and Present', Oxford, July 1999).
60. John Quin to Petrus du Toit, 28 Match 1931, OVRIA, 63, 10/4/2, 8.
61. John Quin's report on his visit to Fraserburg, February 1931, OVRIA, 63, 10/4/2/2.
62. Claude Rimington and John Quin, 'Studies on the Photosensitisation of Animals in South Africa: The Presence of a Lethal Factor in Certain Members of the Plant Genus Tribulus', Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Science and Animal Industry (hereafter OJVSAI) 1 (October 1933): 469-91;
63. Claude Rimington and John Quin, 'Studies on the Photosensitisation of Animals in South Africa: The Natura of the Photosensitising Agent in Geeldikkop', OJVSAI 3 (July 1934): 137-:61;
64. Claude Rimington and John Quin, 'Studies on the Photosensitisation of Animals in South Africa: The Biological Formation of Phylloerythrin in the Digestive Tract of Various Domesticated Animals', OJVSAI 4 (April 1935): 463-80.
65. It was not until the 1990s that toxicologists understood the chemical reactions that caused this disease, see Kellerman et al Plant Poisonings, 42-8.
66. For an overview of preventatives and remedies, see Douw Steyn, 'Animal Tolerance to Poisonous Plants', OJVSAI 1 (July 1933): 149-57;
67. Steyn, Toxicology of Plants, 29-30
68. Vergiftiging van Mens en Dier, 21-8
69. John Quin to Petrus du Toit, 28 March 1931, OVRIA, 63, 10/4/2, 8;
70. John Quin and Claude Rimington, 'The Geeldikkop Disease in Sheep', FSA 10 (March 1935): 101-2.
71. Marguerite Henrici, 'Some Physiological Aspects of the Genus Tribulus', OJVSAI 10 (April 1938): 367-92;
72. John Quin's report, 'Investigations into Geeldikkop and Related Problems amongst Farm Stock in South Africa', 24 February 1948; OVRIA 36, 7/2/4/ 1, 25.
73. Annual Report of the Colonial Veterinary Surgeon for 1877, Cape Parliamentary Papers, G8-77, 10.
74. Beinart, Rise of Conservation, chapter 3.
75. See also Andrew Smith, Pastoralism in Africa: Origins and Development Ecology (London: Hurst & Co,, 1992), 135-42;
76. Nancy Jacobs, Environment, Power and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 86-101.
77. Illtyd Pole Evans. Botanical Survey of South Africa: A Guide to Botanical Survey Work (Pretoria: Government Printing Press, 1922).
78. UG49-1923, Final Report of the Drought Investigation Commission, 1923, 1-22. Many South African farms were unfenced and animals were kraaled, or driven to a pen, at night for protection from predators such as jackals. This trekking to the pen could form eroded trails across the veld, leading to sluiting or the formation of gullies by rain erosion.
79. Illtyd Pole Evans, 'The Union as a Pastoral Country', FSA 7 (September 1932): 236.
80. John Acocks, Veld Types of South Africa (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1953), 2.
81. John Bews, 'An Account of the Chief Types of Vegetation in South Africa, with Notes on the Plant Succession', The Journal of Ecology, 4 (December 1916): 129-59;
82. John Bews, Plant Forms and their Evolution in South Africa (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1925).
83. For example, Frederick Clements, Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1916);
84. Arthur G. Tansley and Thomas F. Chipp, Aims and Methods in the Study of Vegetation (London: British Empire Vegetation Committee, 1926);
85. Frederick Clements, 'Nature and Structure of Climax', Journal of Ecology, 24, 1 (February 1936): 252-84;
86. Frederick Clements and Victor Shelford, Bio-Ecology (New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1939);
87. H. Oosting, The Study of Plant Communities (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1956);
88. John Sheail, Seventy-Five Years in Ecology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987);
89. Ian Scoones, 'Range Management, Science and Policy', in Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns (eds), The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment (Oxford: James Currey, 1996);
90. Peder Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire 1895-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001);
91. Helen Tilley, '"Africa as a Living Laboratory": The African Research Survey and the British Colonial Empire: Consolidating Environmental, Medical and Anthropological Debates 1920-1940' (D.Phil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001).
92. In the contemporary literature, see for example, Graham Jacks and Robert Whyte, The Rape of the Earth:A World Survey of Soil Erosion (London: Faber and Faber, 1939);
93. Hugh H. Bennett, Soil Conservation (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company Inc., 1939);
94. Paul Sears, Deserts on the March (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1949).
95. More recently, David Anderson, 'Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography, and Drought: The Colonial State and Soil Conservation in East Africa during the 1930s', African Affairs 8 (July 1984): 321-43;
96. Beinart, 'Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development'; Dodson, 'Above Politics?' and 'A Soil Conservation Safari'.
97. Philip Viljoen, 'Annual report for year ended 31 August 1938', FSA 13 (December 1938): 474.
98. Thomas Hall, Our Veld: A Major National Problem (Johannesburg: Association of Scientific and Technical Societies of South Africa, 1942), 6.
99. Quin and Rimington, 'The Geeldikkop Disease in Sheep', 101.
100. For example, Delius and Schirmer, 'Soil Conservation in a Racially Ordered Society'; Dodson, 'Above Politics?'; Dodson, 'A Soil Conservation Safari'.
101. Herbert Curson, 'Notes on Glossina pallidipes in Zululand', Bulletin of Entomological Research 14 (May 1924): 445-53;
102. Brown, 'Tropical Medicine and Animal Diseases'.
103. The toxic varieties that had been identified by the 1930s were named Senecio burchelli, Senecio latifolius, Senecio retrorsus and Senecio isatidius: Steyn, Toxicology of Plants in South Africa 449-56;
104. Gilles de Kock, Petrus du Toit and Douw Steyn, 'Studies on the Aetiology of Dunsiekte or Enzootic Liver Disease of Equines in South Africa', Seventeenth Report of the Director of Veterinary Services and Animal Industry, 1928, 617-44;
105. Watt and Breyer-Brandwijk, Medicinal and Poisonous Plants of Southern Africa, 198-205. Douw Steyn to Petrus du Toit, 9 February 1938, OVRIA, 39, 7/8/2, 3;
106. Douw Steyn to Petrus Du Toit, 23 November 1938, OVRIA, 39, 7/8/2, 29;
107. Douw Steyn to John Phillips (Ecologist at the University of the Witwatersrand) 16 April 1940, OVRIA, 39, 7/8/1,
108. See also, Gilles de Kock, 'Diseases of Sheep in Relation to the Pasture Under South African Conditions', JSAVMA 1 (August 1928): 29-38.
109. Watt and Breyer-Brandwijk, Medicinal and Poisonous Plants, 192-4;
110. Douw Steyn 'Vermeersiekte in Stock', FSA 8, 87 (June 1933), 211-12.
111. Beinart, Rise of Conservation, 122.
112. Douw Steyn, 'Kaalsiekte in Kids and Lambs', FSA 13 (April 1938), 147.
113. Quin and Rimington, 'The Geeldikkop Disease in Sheep', 101.
114. See for example, Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945 (New York: Longman, 1983), chapter 11;
115. Peter Delius, A Lion Among the Caule: Reconstruction and Resistance in the Northern Transvaal (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1996), chapter 2;
116. Colin Murray, Black Mountain: Land, Class and Power in the Eastern Orange Free State 1880s to 1980s (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), chapter 5;
117. Beinart, Rise of Conservation, chapter 10.
118. 'Vermeersiekte', FSA, 3, 27 (June 1928), p. 841.
119. 'The Eradication of Gifblaar (Dichapetalum cymosum)', FSA 10 (June 1935): 233-6; ' Science solves the Gifblaar Problem', FW 51 (15 July 1936): 1385;
120. Philip Viljoen, 'Annual Report for Year Ended 31 August 1935', FSA 10 (December 1935): 491-541;
121. Philip Viljoen's Annual Report for Year End 31 August 1936', FSA 14 (June 1939): 284-7.
122. See for example, Beinart, Rise of Conservation, 235-265, 367-390.
123. T J. Naudé (Chief Division of Entomology), 'Biological Control of Jointed Cactus', FSA 30 (May 1955): 259-60, 272.
124. J. Leeman (Director of Soil Conservation and Extension) to Petrus du Toit, 18 December 1946, OVRIA, 64, 10/4/4, 8.
125. Douw Steyn, 'The Toxicity of Sodium Chlorate', OJVSAI 1 (July 1933): 157-62; Report of the Committee on Poisonous Plants, 22 August 1938, OVRIA, 55, 7/8/3, 12;
126. Philip Viljoen to Petrus du Toit, 11 November 1938, OVRIA, 39, 7/8/2, 28.
127. Petrus du Toit, 'Investigations into the cause of Vomeersiekte[sic] in Sheep', Thirteenth and Fourteenth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Education and Research, 1928, 109-53;
128. A.H. Pagan 'Vombeerbos Paradox', FW 39 (27 August 1930): 2077;
129. A.H. Pagan, 'The only way with vomeerbos', FW 49 (8 May 1935): 597-598;
130. A.H. Pagan to Petrus du Toit, 22 June 1935, OVRIA, 64, 10/4/3/2/1, 1.
131. For example, Roy Behnke, Ian Scoones and Carol Kerven, Range Ecology at Disequilibrium: New Models of Natural Variability and Pastoral Adaptation in African Savannas (London: Overseas Development Institute, 1993);
132. T.S. Kellerman,T.W. Naudé, N. Fourie, 'The Distribution, Diagnosis and Estimated Economic Impact of Poisonous Plants and Mycotoxicoses', Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research 62, 2 (1996): 65-90;
133. Kellerman et al, Plant Poisonings.