South Africa’s history of colonialism and apartheid has commonly been held responsible, at least partly, for a corpus of knowledge about mental health which has racist undertones (Swartz 1998). The notion of cultural relativism has been used to legitimate shameful practices and serious inequalities in service provision. Conditions attributable to poverty – have been attributed to ‘culture’ in order, consciously or unconsciously, to mask enormous inequality in South African society (Swartz 1985).