STILL TO BE NAMED: An exploration of African Epistemologies using Simphiwe Dana’s selected works

This book is written from self-knowledge of black people which is embedded on the African epistemology. It is therefore bringing this African epistemology that is undying by paying attention to the systems of knowledge such as the language which carries our spirituality, as such, it has kept our knowledges safe. The book challenges black people to draw from within and exercise self-love. Hence the call to come back to the self as a step towards the restoration of humanity because the African epistemology is about the preservation of life in its totality. The importance of healing among African people is discussed to show that it is carried in song that is a means to connect black people to the spiritual realm. The African epistemology is brought to the fore to argue that it is in the present because it is derived from the African cosmological understanding that life is a single whole. The contribution of the book is in theorising from an African epistemology which is a praxis of decoloniality because it is moving away from Western epistemology. In writing this book we are joining Simphiwe Dana in her assertion in the song: Ndize mama tata from her first album that we are the hope that for which our ancestors died (silithemba balifela).