Zondi, Balungile Prudence.Ndlovu, Malwande Sinesipho.2024-12-312024-12-3120232023https://hdl.handle.net/10413/23511Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.Studying people’s experiences during pandemic times has been an anthropological research interest. In 1960 medical anthropologists theorized that people are affected by epidemiological transitions that have shaped their explanatory models (meaning to their state of being sick/ill) and they have recorded medical interventions as their immediate response. Methodologically, medical anthropologists undertake qualitative research that provides a holistic lens on people to (i) understand the political economy which permits or hinders people’s access to medical care and facilities, (ii) understand the cultural and social dimensions of the pandemic (iii) its impact on individuals, communities, and societies (iv) and the extent to which people give meanings to their illness/diseases and the interventions they employ. This qualitative research purposively and snowball sampled twenty participants to probe health adversities and pluralistic interventions employed by the community of Bulwer (Gqumeni location), KwaZulu- Natal in response to COVID-19. Data analysed through the Critical Medical Anthropology Theory and the Explanatory Model Theory revealed COVID-19 health risk-related adversities that hindered the Gqumeni community to access health facilities in the rural area. The study revealed that when all has failed or when all else seems inaccessible in the presence of rural communities during pandemic times, people rely on ethnomedicine as their hope. The community escaped COVID-19 adversities by relying on medical pluralism which is the use of medical herbs drawn from cultural epistemics of indigenous knowledge systems such as raw garlic, umhlonyane “Artemisia Afra”, Gumtree (omhlophe), unsukumbili, “senecio gregatus”, isibhaha “Pepper bark tree”, ikhathazo “alepidea amatymbica”, uhlunguhlungu “mountain bitter-tea”, ukalumuzi, and unukani “black stinkwood” as an alternative for biomedicine. The study thus contributes these ethnomedicinal herbs towards medical pluralism as an intention to advance the decoloniality of health interventions in Africa. Study findings also contributed to the decolonial conversation that sought to endorse the use of ethnomedical herbs as the cradle of healing in Africa and mostly in rural communities. The study also recommends the improvement of rural medical facilities so that people’s choices of medical interventions will be broadened. It further recommends that the Department of Agriculture should perverse the extinction of indigenous plants within the community. More studies are still needed to advance medical pluralism in rural areas in South Africa and in Africa.enMedical pluralism.Medical anthropology.Ethnomedicine.Biomedicine.Rural communities.Indigenous knowledge.Thesis