Tracing the roots of biomedical hegemony in South Africa: A critical discourse analysis of colonial and apartheid policies and their impact on traditional health practitioners

This paper traces the roots of biomedical hegemony and the enduring marginalisation of Traditional Health Practitioners (THPs) in South Africa’s public health care sector. Using Fairclough’s three-tier Critical Discourse Analysis framework, this study examines how linguistic choices in seven colonial and apartheid-era laws and ordinances contributed to the dislocation and exclusion of THPs from public healthcare discourse. The analysis of these prescripts reveals how the construction of biomedical hegemony in South Africa was carefully curated and reinforced by systematically criminalising specific segments of traditional health practices, omitting any reference to this practice in policy, denying THPs agency and economic access, disregarding indigenous forms of training and restricting access to the cultivation and care of medicinal plants. The paper concludes that meaningful reform is required to challenge the pervasive biomedical hegemony and restore the relevance of THPs in South Africa. • Colonial and apartheid laws institutionalised biomedicine. • The lexical choices in policy function as a tool of suppression. • Various aspects of traditional philosophy were criminalised. • Education was used to suppress traditional means of apprenticeship. • Land was viewed as a commodity, excluding land as a site for healing