Apartheid-era racialization caused Bantu to be replaced by Ubuntu

Evidence

The change in Ubuntu as a prevailing label demonstrates a process which is subject to change regarding the connection between discourse and context. There is an explicit interdiscursive relationship of Bantu compared with Ubuntu (Waal, 2011). Because of racial categorizing by the apartheid regime, the negative connotations of the notions of Bantu have been replaced by the concepts of Ubuntu in South Africa. Within the context of a more open South Africa, the discourse of Ubuntu reclaims humanism and a relational perception of being with oneself and others. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 824

Categorization

• XREF: A case study in how political regimes shape philosophical terminology - echoes similar term-replacement dynamics in other colonial contexts.
• SEED: Potential article angle: how political oppression reshapes the vocabulary of philosophy itself.