Insects and indigenous knowledge in exhibitions and education with special reference to Mashonzha, the so-called mopane worm : Session IV : indigenous knowledge and exhibitions

From a cultural point of view, the mopane worm or Mashonzha is one of the most important insects in South Africa. However, when we started to work on the cultural uses of insects we soon found that there were people living in Mashonzha harvesting areas that do not know the life cycle of this insect. We also established that many people who know the life cycle or parts thereof, have a limited understanding of its consequences for sustainable harvesting. In our recent research we investigated the extent to which the life cycle is understood and the extent to which people are able to use it. Our results clearly show that there is a need for teaching aids such as posters to bring indigenous knowledge into the classroom, and our first poster on Mashonzha is mentioned as an example. We believe that Mashonzha can be developed as an icon for the teaching of sustainable harvesting, community involvement, complex life cycles and the use of indigenous knowledge as a basis from which to teach complex concepts in science and technology, and business management. This is strongly in line with the vision of the Minister of Science and Technology who has appealed to scientists to bring science and technology into the lives of the people. We discuss our progress and refer to plans for additional posters.