Nombulelo T Shange is a sociology lecturer at the University of the Free
State (UFS), Bloemfontein, South Africa. Shange has contributed to the
formulation of decolonised curriculum through her introduction of two
new courses on social movements and the sociology of health and illness.
Both courses set the decolonial agenda by pulling from the works of African
scholars, while the Health and Illness course breaks boundaries by
centralising the course on overlooked discourse on African understandings
of healing and the meaning of health. Shange is the chairperson of the
newly formed UFS Women’s Forum. She is pursuing her PhD in Anthropology
at UFS. Shange’s PhD focuses on indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs),
particularly ritual and healing practices. She completed her master’s degree
(MA) in African traditional religion while focusing on the Shembe Church at
the university currently known as Rhodes University located in Makhanda
in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Shange has published on
topics related to feminism, indigenous knowledge (IK), race and
decoloniality in mainstream media and through academic books and
journals. Nombulelo has also worked on social and ecological justice issues,
working for nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) – groundWork and
Friends of the Earth South Africa – where she occupied a role as media
manager. Shange’s greatest achievement at these NGOs was creating a
media training programme and online platform for communities faced with
ecological injustice – these include coal-affected communities from the
Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo provinces, the South African
Waste Pickers Association and many others. The goal was to use digital
storytelling to help people narrate the lived experiences typically ignored
by mainstream media and institutions.