Njabulo Simakahle Ndebele is an academic and writer of fiction who is the former vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Cape Town (UCT).
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.
He joined the foundation in September 1998, immediately after a five-year term of office as vice-chancellor and principal of the University of the North in Sovenga, in the then Northern Province.
[2] His highly influential essays on South African literature and culture were published in a collection Rediscovery of the Ordinary.
He has done public service in South Africa in the areas of broadcasting policy, school curriculum in history, and more recently as chair of a government commission on the development and use of African languages as media of instruction in South African higher education.