Following a global trend in humanities since the mid-1970s, South African humanities faculties began to include formal programmes in gender and sexualities studies from the mid-1990s on. While the immediate post-flag democratic era encouraged intellectual concentration on diverse questions of power and knowledge, the new century saw a decline in academics' critical interest in questions of gender, race and class. This article explores the seeming "disappearance" of humanities-based and rigorous debate which assumes the value of feminisms.