During the celebration of Women's Day in South Africa, the necessity of recognizing and restoring indigenous identities is emphasized. Recognition for women must be accompanied by amplifying the voices of those who have long fought against systems of oppression so that their rich history can be preserved and acknowledged in educational systems.
Recently, as the country celebrated its National Women's Day, the world also commemorated International Day of the Indigenous Peoples. This is particularly important for Africa, where indigenous peoples face erasure and suppression of their identity.
For decades, indigenous peoples have resisted Western imperialistic systems of oppression across all spheres: languages, history, traditions, and education. Therefore, this celebration cannot be reduced merely to a display of traditional clothing, music, and culture while ignoring the institutions that continue to marginalize these people.
There is a contradiction in celebrating indigenous peoples while simultaneously ignoring the systems that have distanced them from their identity. Culture cannot be celebrated while allowing languages to disappear, indigenous knowledge to remain peripheral, and the younger generation to lose connection with history.
For indigenous peoples, this has always been more than just a matter of cultural recognition. It is a right to preserve languages, protect histories, transmit knowledge between generations, and recognize their systems of understanding.
Colonialism understood this perfectly. It sought not only to control land and resources but also to completely destroy the link between people and their identity. Oral histories were rejected because they did not conform to Western definitions of authoritative history, and indigenous knowledge was relegated to common folklore, while African languages were sidelined and European knowledge was elevated to the status of a universal standard.
South Africa knows this history well. More than 30 years after political liberation, institutions still bear the imprint of colonialism and apartheid. Political liberation did not automatically lead to epistemic liberation; many structures that create and transmit Eurocentric knowledge remained untouched.
Discussions about the decolonization of education, including movements like #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, were not just about statues, reading lists, or tuition fees. They were about who has the right to define knowledge in a society that claims to be its own.
The problem with the curriculum is not just what has been excluded. It lies in the prism through which everything has been presented: a European timeline, a Western starting point, and a version of history that too often forces Black students to see themselves as secondary in their own national narrative.
Why are African knowledge systems still treated as something to be added to the curriculum rather than as the foundation upon which the curriculum should be built? Why are indigenous languages celebrated culturally, yet so rarely used as languages of serious intellectual, scientific, technological, and institutional life?
Language carries history, memory, worldview, and identity. When a language weakens, we lose not only vocabulary; we lose ways of understanding shaped over generations.
The same applies to indigenous knowledge. African communities developed complex knowledge in agriculture, environmental management, medicine, architecture, and social organization long before colonialism declared itself the authority on civilization. This knowledge does not become irrelevant simply because it is indigenous.
This is where reform is crucial. Bearers of indigenous knowledge—elders, storytellers, traditional practitioners, community historians, and ordinary South Africans—must be recognized as participants in the knowledge creation process, not merely sources for academic extraction. Universities, schools, museums, research institutions, and the government must create conditions for teaching, researching, and developing indigenous knowledge in a meaningful and applicable way.
A child should not leave their history outside the classroom to receive an education. They should learn about the world while understanding the intellectual, cultural, and political traditions that have shaped their own society. African philosophies, such as Ubuntu/Botho, should not be decorative cultural concepts but legitimate intellectual traditions.
Education does more than just transmit information; it teaches people how to understand themselves. If a young person's history is constantly presented as secondary, their language as less useful, and their knowledge as inferior, we should not be surprised when they begin to associate progress with distancing themselves from their own identity.
Africa does not have to choose between tradition and modernity. We can build technologically advanced, globally competitive societies while remaining deeply rooted in our history, languages, and intellectual traditions. It is not about creating something new, but about restoration—returning to the knowledge systems and cultural continuity that colonialism deliberately destroyed.
The goal cannot simply be to preserve indigenous identity for future generations to look back on. Culture that survives only in museums or heritage festivals is preserved as a relic, not allowed to develop.
If we are serious about transformation, indigenous identity must become part of our education, institutions, languages, research, and national development. Future generations deserve their histories, languages, knowledge, and philosophies, as well as the confidence that being African is not an obstacle to modernity. This is the foundation from which we must decide what kind of modernity we want.
Our victory is not in remembering who erased us, but in ensuring that they never succeed.
Local jazz master Natalia Rungan collaborated with Ghanaian artist Victor Dei Jr. Their joint album, titled African Breyani, demonstrates the potential of Africans when they unite with full commitment.
The first meeting with Ghanaian pianist and composer Victor Dei Jr. took place in 2018 at the National Youth Jazz Festival in Makhanda (then Grahamstown). He performed with Marcus Wyatt, and Rungan clearly remembers that concert. Dei Jr.'s music left a deep impression on her, which she described as more than mere admiration.
After this festival, she tried to contact Victor, hoping for collaboration, but the attempts were unsuccessful. Years passed until in 2024, Victor returned to South Africa with the GH Jazz Collective to perform at the same National Youth Jazz Festival. That year, Rungan was leading the National School Jazz Orchestra, and due to scheduling conflicts, they had little time to talk. Nevertheless, during a short break between rehearsals, he mentioned a song he had heard in 2018 and expressed hope for a possible collaboration.
When Victor returned home, Rungan decided to act more purposefully. She also felt more confident as a composer and lyricist, so she contacted him again. This is when the collaboration began, resulting in the album African Breyani.
For Rungan, this album marks several important moments: it is her first experience collaborating with an African artist outside of South Africa, and also the first international album of this scale that she has produced. Although the album was recorded in South Africa and Ghana, its significance extends far beyond these borders, serving as a reminder of the possibilities that open up when African musicians choose each other.
Many asked about the origin of the name. Rungan wrote the song African Breyani in 2023, commissioning her colleague Prince Bolo to produce it. While watching an Indian film, she contemplated the tension between her ethnicity and her homeland. Her heritage defines her as Indian, but Africa is her home. Reflecting on this, she started thinking about breyani.
Breyani is prepared from many spices. Some of these spices can be bitter or unpalatable, especially cardamom. However, together they create something rich, beautiful, and incredibly delicious, a dish known to most South Africans regardless of their background.
The more she reflected on this album, the clearer it became that it was created on the same principle: different musicians, different countries, different musical traditions, different stories, and different personalities. Each is unique in itself, but together they form something none of them could have created alone. That is what African Breyani is.
In childhood, Rungan rarely encountered music from the rest of Africa. She believed, as many were taught, that to become a great musician, one should look to Europe or the United States as a reference. She was never encouraged to seek exceptional musical treasures within her own continent.
The renowned Kenyan author, playwright, and scholar Ngugi wa Thiong'o powerfully writes about the decolonization of the mind, arguing that colonialism shaped not only political and economic realities but also how we see ourselves and value our cultures. Reflecting on the album, Rungan increasingly realized that one of the long-term consequences of colonialism was the formation of our self-perception and understanding of culture. This influenced how many of us value our musical heritage, causing us to look outward in search of perfection and often ignoring the wealth that already exists across Africa.
To be perfectly honest, her collaboration with Victor did not start because he was Ghanaian. It started because she recognized something in his music through the common language of jazz. However, working with Victor, Gaddiel Amoa, Frank Kissi, and Bernard Aiso allowed her to get to know a country that seemed strangely familiar to her. She discovered musical languages that resonated with South African traditions; rhythms and melodies that felt less like foreign influence and more like long-lost relatives.
More importantly, she found friends who have now become her family. Victor and she did not have to force the relationship or artificially create a creative bond; the music seemed to find them. Ideas flowed naturally, conversations were easy, and songwriting never felt forced. They certainly worked hard, but the foundation of the collaboration was already laid.
African Breyani was never just an attempt to merge South Africa and Ghana in music. It grew out of sincere friendship and a deep sense of trust and respect that arose almost effortlessly. Rungan often felt that they were uncovering music rather than trying to create it. For her, this is what makes the collaboration so significant, reminding us that the strongest musical partnerships are built not only on talent or technique but also on connection, openness, and a willingness to listen to something greater than one's own 'self.'
In many ways, this album was a journey home. But not in the narrow sense of nationality or ethnicity, but in the broad sense of discovering that Africa has always contained dialogues that we were never taught. Through this project, she understood that the distance between Durban and Accra is not as vast as she once imagined. The musical threads connecting these places are ancient, enduring, and deeply human.
The timing of the album's creation also prompted her to reflect deeply on the present moment. Recent events in South Africa have exposed painful contradictions. There is a visible threat of suspicion, fear, and division endangering relationships that should never have been broken.
It is easy to speak of unity in abstract terms, but much harder to build it. Collaboration is one way to achieve this goal. When musicians write together, travel, debate arrangements, laugh, eat, and create together, they begin to dismantle the stereotypes that divide them. They stop seeing 'foreigners' and start seeing fellow artists, compatriots, people.
Therefore, Rungan believes such projects are highly significant. They remind us that Africa is not just a collection of countries separated by borders, but a network of stories, rhythms, languages, memories, and people whose histories have always been intertwined. Her hope is that African Breyani becomes not just an album, but an invitation—an invitation for listeners to hear the beauty of their interconnected stories, and also an invitation to restore the pride, curiosity, and creative potential that comes from recognizing oneself in others.
