Natal Ndwandwe International’s (ft. Kwazi Nsele) “Bayakhala”: An indictment of State Biosecurity and Spiritual Violence in South Africa

Bongumenzi Mtshal ORCID iD

Issue: Vol. 7 No.8 2026 Article 2 pp. 2191 – 2202
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2026782 Published online 29th September 2026

© 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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This article investigates the ontological friction generated when secular state health protocols governed by a medicalized biosecurity hegemony supersede the traditional spiritual duties owed to the deceased in South Africa. The purpose of the study is to examine the epistemic and spiritual violence caused by COVID-19 burial regulations through the lens of indigenous Zulu ontologies of death and ancestral continuity. Utilizing a qualitative methodology rooted in interpretive phenomenological analysis and thematic analysis, the study treats the 2025 Maskandi song “Bayakhala” by Natal Ndwandwe International (ft. Kwazi Nsele) as a vocal archive and site of marginalized legal protest. The lyrics were transcribed, translated from isiZulu to English, thematically coded, and juxtaposed against state burial mandates and established ethnographic and philosophical literature. The findings revealed that the state’s reduction of the “social corpse” to a “pathological object” through measures such as mandatory PPE, plastic wrapping, prohibition of night vigils, ritual washing, and direct mortuary-to-grave burials resulted in significant epistemic violence, hermeneutical injustice, spiritual limbo, “unquiet ancestors,” and unresolved communal grief. The discussion argues that these disruptions represent a continuation of colonial epistemic domination and necropolitics, which delegitimize African indigenous knowledge systems. This study contributes to scholarship by positioning Maskandi music as a legitimate source of legal and ontological evidence in decolonial public health research. It calls for a pluralistic jurisprudence and future public health models that protect both biological life and ancestral continuity, thereby advancing culturally responsive emergency regulations in diverse African contexts.

Keywords: Biosecurity hegemony, Epistemic violence, African ritual ontology, Maskandi, COVID-19 burial regulations

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Bongumenzi Mtshali is a South African educator, researcher, and Master’s candidate in African Languages at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He holds a Bachelor of Education (IsiZulu and History) and a BA Honours in African Languages awarded cum laude from UJ. Mtshali has extensive teaching and lecturing experience across secondary and tertiary levels, including roles at the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand, and Alliance Française de Johannesburg. His scholarship is distinctly multidisciplinary, traversing broad and often divergent domains within African languages, bridging structural grammar and morphophonology with African oral literature, folklore, and praise poetry. Grounded in indigenous knowledge systems and decolonial theory, his work critically examines epistemic justice across both linguistic mechanics and literary archives. He has authored peer-reviewed research on Zulu praise poetry and presented on African folklore at national conferences.

Mtshali, Bongumenzi. “Natal Ndwandwe International’s (ft Kwazi Nsele) “Bayakhala”: An indictment of State Biosecurity and Spiritual Violence in South Africa.” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 7, no.8 (2026): 2191 – 2202. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2026782

© 2026 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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