Last Thursday, the Sowetan Women’s Club hosted a profoundly enlightening conversation about Black women’s hair. Facilitated by the paper’s uncompromisingly radical editor, Nwabisa Makunga, the panel comprised three black women who have been central in discourse on black hair and its scientific, aesthetic and political meaning. 

Nyaki Tshabangu is the co-founder of Natural Hair Co, a small enterprise that was established with the aim of creating products for Black hair; Prof Ncoza Dlova is the dean and head of the University of KwaZulu-Natal's School of Clinical Medicine and a renowned dermatologist who has been involved in the scientific study of Black hair; and I was invited as a scholar of Black Consciousness who has invested in the study of the politics of Black identity. ..