Marginalisation and Exclusion in Honeybush Commercialisation in South Africa

Honeybush, Cyclopia spp., is a plant that is indigenous¹ to South Africa with a long history of use as a herbal tea by locals in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces (Joubert et al. 2011; Van Wyk 2011; Van Wyk & Gorelik 2017). The genus Cyclopia has twenty-three species that are endemic to the fynbos biome with a distribution in the coastal plains and mountainous regions of the Eastern and Western Cape (Schutte 1997). Honeybush tea is one of the bush teas that have been used on the African continent by preference or as a substitute for ordinary tea (Cheney & Scholtz