Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane, first post-apartheid Vice Chancellor and Rector at the University of Fort Hare, has taught English Studies, Comparative Literature, and African Studies at universities in Southern Africa, West Africa, Europe, US, and Australia.
He is the author of Mzala (1980), Children of Soweto (1982), Children of the Diaspora (1996), and a children’s book, Race between the Turtles and the Cheetahs (2004).
He is editor of Selected Poems: Mongane Wally Serote (1982), Selected Poems: Sipho Sydney Sepamla (1983), Hungry Flames and Other Black South African Stories (1986), and Words Gone Two Soon: Tribute to Phaswane Mpe and K. Sello Duiker (2006).
He is co-editor of Global Voices: Contemporary Literature from the Non-Western World (1995), ‘the most comprehensive anthology on the subject available anywhere in the world’.
His scholarly publications include Images of the Voiceless: Essays on Popular Culture and the Media (1988 – with J. Haynes and A. Bamikunle) and Multicultural Education in Colleges and Universities: A Trans-disciplinary Approach (1998 – with H. Ball and S. Berkowitz )—the latter charts a new course in education and is an off-shoot of the 1990’s debate on cultural diversity.
He was commissioned by the Southern African Democracy Education Trust to edit Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 2, 1970-1980 (2006) and a companion volume South Africans Telling their Stories (forthcoming).
Mzamane was appointed by former President Nelson Mandela and current President Thabo Mbeki to serve on the SABC Board and the Heraldry Council. He was for eight years founder chairman of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, the founding patron of the Freedom of Expression Institute, and the founding director of the Book Development Council of Africa.
He was also chairman of the African Arts Fund (under the auspices of the UN Centre against Apartheid) and serves on the board of the Newtown Film and Television School. He is currently engaged in producing, under the auspices of the national Department of Arts and Culture, an Encyclopaedia of South African Arts and Culture.