The Academic Sangoma

15/10/2025

Big shout out to my newest top fans! Tshwarelo Kwenaite, ProfShobede SZ, Lethukukhanya Donga

28/09/2025

, please go like your academic Sangoma's reel.🫠

28/09/2025

Earlier today I shared how stressed (and excited!) I’ve been about preparing for CREATE 2025. Just a few hours later, my inbox lit up with something that made it all feel real - the official welcome email from the organising committee.

📩 “On behalf of the organising committee, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to the inaugural Creative and Engaged Transdisciplinary Research for Health Equity Conference (CREATE 2025), held at Stellenbosch University, Tygerberg, Cape Town…” - Prof Lynn Hendricks, Conference Chair

Reading through the details, a few things stood out immediately:
■ 257 delegates registered, proof that there is real appetite for creative and inclusive approaches to health equity.
■ Plenary sessions on indigenous knowledge, research ecosystems, and community-led manifestos, deeply aligned with the commitments I hold as both a traditional health practitioner and scholar.
■ And then the walkshops, immersive storytelling, jazz, fashion, astronomy, and First Thursdays - a reminder that learning and knowledge are alive in culture, rhythm, and community.

This feels bigger than just a conference. It is a bold experiment in doing research differently - one that connects policy, practice, healing, leadership, and decolonial knowledge-making in ways that matter.

The stress of packing still lingers (😅 my mom may still have to rescue me there), but my excitement has now doubled. I can’t wait to step into CREATE 2025.

20/09/2025

A Dream Deferred…

When I hear those words, I don’t think of poetry first.
I think of my grandfather.

I think of the dreams he buried in silence because to speak them aloud was dangerous.
I think of the knowledge carried in whispers, hidden in indumba(s) and backrooms, because the law had made it illegal to be what I am today.

Deferred is the right word.
Not erased.
Not forgotten.
Deferred.

Because here I stand, ngaka ya setso, initiated as a teenager while my peers filled out career forms. I didn’t choose this path—it chose me. While others wrote “doctor, lawyer, engineer,” my life’s paperwork was already sealed by spirit and ancestry.

And yet, for most of my 14 years in this work, I’ve watched how society continues to delay the dream:
- Universities that pretend African healing is not a science.
- Policymakers who call us “unregulated” while refusing to build the very structures that would legitimize us (with our own voices).
- Health systems that invite us only as tokens, never as equals.

This is what “a dream deferred” looks like in real time. It looks like communities denied access to their own healing. It looks like knowledge disrespected until it is appropriated. It looks like generations of practitioners treated as a threat instead of a resource.

So I ask: what happens when a dream is deferred?

It ferments.
It sharpens.
It refuses to die.
It waits for someone stubborn enough, unapologetic enough, to carry it into the open.

That is the work I do. Not because it is glamorous, but because it is necessary. Because I know what happens when dreams are delayed too long: people suffer. Families grieve. Communities lose access to healing that has sustained them for centuries.

This is why I fight for Indigenous Health Knowledge Systems (IHKS):
⚖️ Not as folklore.
⚖️ Not as nostalgia.
⚖️ But as science.

Science that is rigorous.
Science that heals.
Science that must stand shoulder to shoulder with biomedicine, not beneath it.

So, no—I will not counterfeit myself to sit at anyone else’s table.
I know my table.
My table is here, in the house of bongaka ba setso.
And it is long overdue that the deferred dream of African Indigenous Health Sciences takes its rightful seat in the halls of policy, education, and healthcare.

Because a dream deferred is not just about me. It is about us. About the generations who carried, and the generations who will inherit.

And I refuse to pass on a deferred dream.

Thokoza! 🪶

20/09/2025

With Celi Nhlengethwa – I just made it onto their weekly engagement list by being one of their top engagers! 🎉

20/09/2025

I will never, EVER, enter any space as a counterfeit.

I will never mute my identity as ngaka ya setso, a healer initiated into this work not by career choice, but by calling. I have carried this responsibility for 14 years, since adolescence, long before I even understood what it meant to be “professional.”

I did not apply for this.
I was not interviewed for this.
I was not shortlisted for this.
I was not given three neat “options” to choose from, the way one applies to study law, medicine, or engineering.

Bongaka ba setso bonkgethile. Sacred.
I was chosen as a child (ke le ngwana sekolo, ke le ngwana e monyane).

This is not a career I entered. This is a calling that entered me.

And so I refuse to dilute myself to keep a seat at anyone else’s table. I don’t care if you want to keep your seat, I know my table. My table is at Indigenous Health Knowledge Systems (IHKS), where African Traditional Medicine is not a curiosity, not folklore, not a metaphor, but a rigorous science of life.

Yes, I want to sit across from you: in policy rooms, in health councils, in academic conferences. But I will not sit across as a counterfeit version of myself. I will sit across as I am: a black, coloured, q***r, youthful autodidact, a healer whose authority comes not from colonial validation but from ancestral initiation and 14 years of lived practice.

When I speak of ukwelapha kwesintu, when I practice bongaka ba setso, I am not performing tradition. I am activating science. A science that carries its own paradigms, ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodologies. A science that heals individuals, families, and communities; not only biologically, but psychosocially and spiritually.

I am not here to beg for recognition.
I am here to demand respect for a discipline that predates the very systems that now try to marginalize it.

And if that disrupts your table, mfethu, so be it.
Because my table is already set, and it is overflowing with truth, purpose, and healing.

Thokoza!🪶

16/09/2025

With ProfKholofelo Matlhaba – I'm on a streak! I've been a top fan for 7 months in a row. 🎉

02/09/2025

My first time in the African skies, and I arrived alive 😂🤣😂❤

02/09/2025

✨🖋 New on AfroSpiritual-Ink ✨

I’ve just published a new reflection:
“When Knowledge Lives in Silence: The Crisis Facing African Indigenous Medicine.”

For too long, African Indigenous Medicinal Systems have been underdeveloped, under-documented, and under-researched. Our elders carried wisdom in their bones and voices, but not on paper; often because they feared theft and exploitation. Today, we risk losing what was never written, while Traditional Health Practitioners in South Africa remain trapped in professional immobility.

This blog is not just analysis, it’s my call to action: to document without stealing, to research without stripping sacredness, and to build real mobility for THPs.

🌍 Read here:
👉 https://afrospiritual-ink.blogspot.com/2025/09/when-knowledge-lives-in-silence-crisis.html

Let’s continue the conversation. What does it mean for you, for us, if our ancestral medicines vanish into silence?

I was recently asked on LinkedIn: “Where can I read more about African Indigenous Medicinal Systems in detail?” The truth is, you can’t. Not...

31/08/2025

28/05/2025

ᴡʜʏ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɴᴅᴀᴜ ɪɴɪᴛɪᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴅɪᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ɢᴏ ᴡᴇʟʟ.

1. Being told not open your basket.
2. You don’t Femba.
3. Incorect herbs to Parula.
4. No Gona.
5. No scarification muthi.
6. You don’t have ishoba for your Ndau spirit.
7. You don’t have protection
gear for your Ndau spirit.
8. Your herbs don’t come from the water.
9. You did not eat intwaso.
10. Your Gobela does not Femba.

28/03/2025

This morning, as I went about my day, I received an invitation that affirmed years of work, advocacy, and pushing against the tide of exclusion. I have been invited to join the C20 South Africa Equitable Health For All Working Group, an engagement platform of the Group of Twenty (G20), where global policy recommendations on health equity will be shaped and presented to world leaders.

For many, this might be just another international working group, another forum for discussions that never reach the ground. But for me, this is monumental - not just for myself but for African Traditional Health Practitioners (THPs) and the broader indigenous knowledge systems that have long been dismissed, sidelined, or reduced to footnotes in conversations about global health.

From the Margins to the Center
I have spent years advocating for the decolonization of African Traditional Health Practice, not just as a cultural relic to be preserved but as a living, evolving, and essential part of healthcare systems. The knowledge of izangoma, inyangas, and other THPs has sustained communities for generations, treating not just the body but the mind and spirit; long before the biomedical model acknowledged the importance of holistic healing. Yet, for too long, our voices have been absent from global health policy discussions.

Today, that changes.

This invitation is not about me alone. It is about the millions of traditional healers across Africa whose knowledge has been undervalued, about the patients who seek care beyond hospitals, about the urgent need for an inclusive, decolonized approach to health that respects diverse healing traditions.

What This Means Moving Forward
Between March and June 2025, I will be working alongside international health experts, policymakers, and grassroots activists to shape the C20’s health recommendations for the G20. This is a space where I intend to amplify the role of African Traditional Health Practice, challenge Eurocentric biases in global health policy, and advocate for the recognition of THPs as legitimate healthcare providers.

But I am not doing this alone. I need my community, my fellow healers, my peers in traditional health education, and those who believe in the future of decolonized healthcare to walk this journey with me.

If you are passionate about equitable health systems that honour indigenous knowledge, if you believe that African healing traditions deserve a seat at the table, then this is our moment.

Let’s make our voices heard.

📸 Andy Photography, (2022)