Health Sciences Roundtable
Kumalo
Dear Colleagues,
This Friday, 19 September 2025, the University of Johannesburg will host the Health Sciences Roundtable: Reimagining Health Sciences through the Black Archive, at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.
This Roundtable brings together health care practitioners, traditional healers, scholars, and students to deliberate on how South Africa’s health sciences can be reimagined through Indigenous philosophies, Ubuntu ethics, and the Black Archive. At the heart of this project is a clear aim: to equip health care practitioners to hold the competing identities of South Africa coevally — navigating the tensions of colonial legacies and African epistemologies in ways that affirm healing, inclusivity, and justice.
Under the auspices of the Black Archive Project, this dialogue marks the inaugural step in a programme that seeks to transcend the decolonial critique by advancing tangible interventions. These include:
- Restructuring curricula in health sciences,
- Training practitioners in decolonial pedagogies, and
- Embedding Indigenous knowledge systems into clinical education.
The goal is to ensure that transformation translates into real differences in practice and care for South Africans, rather than remaining at the level of theory or critique. The project also works to inform national policy frameworks and accreditation processes in clinical training for our students.
With keynote remarks from Dr. Sinethemba N. Makanya, and contributions from colleagues across South Africa and Switzerland (University of Bern), this Roundtable opens the path towards curriculum reform, capacity building, and sectoral transformation in the health sciences.
This is not only about changing education — it is about reshaping how South Africa heals itself, co-creating a health system that honours our plural identities while delivering inclusive, just, and effective care.
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Sincerely,
Siseko H. Kumalo, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Higher Education Studies
Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies
University of Johannesburg