Njabulo Ndebele

Njabulo Ndebele

"NEW YORK, 17 September 1998 — The Ford Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Njabulo Ndebele, a prominent South African writer and educator, as a Resident Scholar in its New York City office. Ndebele was most recently vice chancellor and principal of the University of the North at Turfloop, Northern Province. He also served as vice rector of the University of the Western Cape and chairman of the African literature department at the University of Witwatersrand.

"Ndebele, 50, is the author of poetry that has appeared in many anthologies and several volumes of fiction, including Bonolo and the Peach Tree and Fools and Other Stories, a chronicle of life in a black township under apartheid. His critical essays were published in a collection called South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary. Ndebele's many prizes include the Noma Award for publishing in Africa, the SANLAM First Prize for outstanding fiction, and the Mofolo-Plomer Award for Fools, which was recently made into a feature film."

Njabulo Ndebele was Vice-Chancellor and Principal at the University of Cape Town from July 2000 to June 2008, following tenure as a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation’s headquarters in New York.

Njabulo Ndebele recently published a novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela (Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2004).


 * Chair, Institute for a Democratic South Africa
 * Trustee, Nelson Mandela Foundation
 * Trustee, Mandela Rhodes Foundation