Introduction
I am a black woman born on African soil in the heart of Soweto during the peak of apartheid shortly before the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. My birth in 1982 occurred within a historical moment marked by intense violence, political struggle, social upheaval, and collective yearning for liberation, peace and inclusivity. While apartheid has formally ended politically, the psychological, social and economic consequences of that system continue to shape the lived realities of many black South Africans today.
Colonialism and apartheid did not only re-organize land, governance, and economic opportunity; but they also shaped the psychological landscapes within which people have come to know themselves. As Frantz Fanon (1967) argued, colonial domination extends beyond material oppression to the inner life, producing forms of alienation, internalised inferiority, and fragmentation of identity. These psychological consequences do not disappear simply because legal systems have changed. They linger within institutions, communities, and often within the individual psyche (Fanon, 1967).
Within dominant western psychological frameworks, distress is frequently understood as an individual problem requiring individual intervention. Yet, African psychological discourse challenges this assumption. Scholars such as Nwoye (2015) argue that African psychology must be understood through relational, communal, and spiritual frameworks that reflect African worldviews. Considering this perspective, the self cannot be understood in isolation from community, history, or spirituality. Psychological wellbeing is therefore not merely the absence of symptoms but the restoration of relational harmony. In my view, this is the essence of Ubuntu. Ubuntu emphasizes collective identity (again as opposed to the western emphasis on individual identity), solidarity, caring and sharing, the relatedness between the physical and metaphysical world, the value of interpersonal relationships or humanism (Nwoye, 2015). Ubuntu is encapsulated in the saying “I am because we are” (Mbiti, 1969) or umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu in IsiZulu, which is my mother tongue.
My own scholarly inquiry on therapeutic approaches in 2021 was expanded with an exploration of mental health among drama therapy Masters students who navigated online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research revealed how structural inequalities such as unequal access to technology, space, and support directly shaped students’ psychological experiences. Distress was not only personal but it was contextual. These findings reinforced an insight central to African psychology: individual wellbeing cannot be separated from social and structural conditions. The insight also led me to reflect on the internal dimensions of liberation. While structural transformation remains essential, there is also a deeply personal dimension to decolonisation; this is the process of returning to the essence of one’s Self (the bolded capital symbolizes the “higher-self”) beyond inherited survival identities. In my forthcoming book to be published in the US later in 2026, titled (Heartcess=Heart+Success): “Heartcess – A Way back Home to Self”, I explore intentional living as a form of praxis; a conscious and embodied process through which individuals can examine inherited patterns, reconnect with their inner values, and cultivate ways of living that align with dignity, awareness and relational integrity.
The Colonial Self and Survival Identities
Fanon (1967) emphasized how colonialism reorganizes subjectivity, producing what might be understood as “survival identities”, these are adaptive selves formed in response to domination. These identities are not pathological in origin; they are intelligent responses to hostile environments. However, when survival becomes the dominant mode of being, the self may remain constrained by fear, hypervigilance, and internalized limitation.
Contemporary psychological discourse increasingly recognizes the physiological dimensions of chronic stress. Prolonged exposure to structural inequity can dysregulate stress responses, shaping patterns of hyperarousal or collapse (Ratele, 2019). While western clinical frameworks often locate dysregulation solely within the individual, an African psychological lens situates distress within relational and socio-political contexts (Nwoye, 2015; Ratele, 2019). The body carries history and the nervous system adapts to context, thus liberation must be both structural and embodied.
In my 2021 research, drama therapy students stress during online learning was exacerbated not only by the pandemic itself but by unequal access to resources and safe environments (Suntsha, 2021). Survival, again was contextual; and to speak of mental health without speaking of inequity is to depoliticize experience. Yet structural critique alone is insufficient if the internalized survival self remains unexamined.
African Psychology and the Restoration of Interconnectedness
African Psychology offers an epistemological shift. Rather than conceptualizing the self as isolated and autonomous, it centres interconnectedness within community, ancestry, land, and spirit (Nwoye, 2015; Ratele, 2019). Ubuntu is then not merely philosophical; it is therapeutic and therefore healing is relational integration.
Malidoma and African indigenous feminist thinker Motsei (2011) emphasize that colonial modernity has fractured communal and spiritual coherence, particularly for African women whose bodies became sites of both symbolic and material violence. Restoration, therefore involves reweaving dignity, agency, and spiritual grounding. In this framework, therapy is not confined to symptom reduction but includes reconnection to story, ritual, embodiment, and collective memory.
African psychology challenges the assumption that western models are universal. Instead, it asserts that knowledge systems are situated and that indigenous epistemologies are not “alternative” but foundational within their contexts (Nwoye, 2015). When intentional living is grounded in such epistemologies, it becomes more than self-improvement. It becomes reclamation.
Intentional Living as Praxis
Paulo Freire (1970) described praxis as reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. Conscientization, the development of critical awareness is incomplete without embodied action. Within this frame, intentional living can be understood as daily praxis: the conscious disruption of inherited scripts of oppression and reactive patterns.
In 2025, I committed to what I described as “intentional disruption” of spaces, patterns and even aspects of myself that were shaped by survival rather than alignment. This was not a rejection of the adaptive self but an inquiry into whether those adaptations still served my becoming. Reflection prompts, ritualized pause, embodied awareness, and relational boundary-setting became tools of praxis. These practices now form the scaffolding of the upcoming “Heartcess” book.
Freire (1970) warned against liberation narratives that reproduce domination through unexamined internalization. Similarly, intentional living devoid of structural awareness risks becoming neoliberal self-optimization; placing the burden of transformation solely on the individuals while ignoring systematic injustice. However, when rooted in decolonial consciousness, intentional living becomes a refusal to allow colonial and inherited scripts to dictate one’s relational and spiritual orientation.
Love, Regulation, and Radical Self-Return
bell hooks (2000) reframed love as an ethic of freedom. In societies structured by domination or oppression, love which is understood as care, commitment, responsibility, respect and trust becomes politically subversive. Self-regard within this lens, is not indulgent; it is resistant.
A regulated nervous system supports the capacity for relational presence. When individuals shift from chronic survival states into social engagement, they access greater openness, creativity, and connection. In my experience, while neuroscience offers language for this shift, African psychology situates regulation within communal and spiritual practices such as song, storytelling, ritual, embodied expression. Regulation therefore, is not apolitical, it is culturally mediated.
Heartcess as Embodied Decolonial Framework
“Heartcess – A Way back Home to Self” emerges at the intersection of African psychology, internal liberation pedagogy, and embodied practice. It is neither purely a memoir no conventional self-help. Rather, it can be read as applied decolonial psychology; translating theoretical understanding into daily rituals of alignment.
Returning home to Self requires cultivating internal conditions that support conscious choice rather than reactivity. It is an act of reclaiming agency from inherited fear. Within “Heartcess” practices of reflection, embodied awareness, and relational integrity are offered not as isolated techniques but as pathways toward integrated living. I suggest that love then, is not abstract sentiment; it is disciplined practice and lies in the principle of Ubuntu.
Returning home to Self does not negate structural struggle. Instead, it insists that liberation must also be internal. Survival identities, while once necessary, need not remain permanent. Through critical reflection, embodied awareness, and intentional relational choices, individuals can renegotiate their relationship to colonial inherited narratives and those that are destructive.
Decolonization is often imagined as institutional reform or political restructuring. These are vital yet the internal colony which is the conditioned mind and voice of limitation, fragmentation, and disconnection must also be addressed. To return home to Self is to reclaim authorship over one’s internal life. It is to move from reactive survival to conscious participation.
Intentional living, grounded in African psychology is therefore not retreat from the world. It is preparation for ethical engagement within it. As interconnected beings, our internal states ripple outward. A self that has returned home is better equipped to participate in communal restoration.
Liberation, then, begins in awareness but must be embodied in practice. In this sense, “Heartcess” is praxis – a structured invitation to reinhabit the Self with consciousness, dignity and love.
REFERENCES
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks (C.L. Markmann, Trans.). Grove Press. (Original work published 1952)
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.
hooks, b. (2002). All about love: New Visions. William Morrow.
Loux The Vintage Guru. (n.d.). Ubuntu [Photograph]. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/343610646561084531/
Mbiti, J.S. (1969). African Religions and philosophy. Heinemann.
Motsei, M. (2011). The kanga and the kangaroo court: Reflections on the rape trial of Jacob Zuma. Jacana Media.
Nwoye, A. (2015). What is African psychology the psychology of? Theory & Psychology, 25(1), 96-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354314565116
Ratele, K. (2019). The world looks like this from here: Thoughts on African Psychology. Wits University Press.
Suntsha, P.F. (2021). Through our lens: An exploration of mental health while learning online as a training drama therapist during a global pandemic. (Master’s research report). University of the Witwatersrand. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/34208
Tezeno, E. (n.d.). Portrait [Photograph]. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/510173464043613547/
When Less Is More. (n.d.). Woman collage with flowers [Photograph]. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/17310779814924901/
