Professor Xoliswa Mtose has been a Vice Chancellor par excellence of the University of Zululand since 2015. As Vice- Chancellor she has taken gargantuan strides in advancing teaching and learning, research and innovation, African scholarship, community engagement and the entire fabric of the university towards academic distinction. Professor Mtose’s influence has been far reaching, from local impact to having an effect on the national as well as on the international stage.
Under the stewardship of Professor Mtose, UNIZULU decidedly positioned itself as A Node for African Thought. In doing so, Professor Mtose has given concrete expression and life to Africa’s long-cherished ideal of establishing an authentic African University. For Professor Mtose, UNIZULU’s posture must be seen as part of our “contribution to the broader struggle for the total emancipation of African people, we are taking bold, deliberate and calculated steps to renegotiate and re-contract with our local, provincial, national, continental and planetary publics through a paradigm
shift from the colonial intellectual model that has alienated many universities in Africa and elsewhere in the nonwestern world from their societies while co-opting them into hegemonic Eurocentric epistemological systems.”
Professor Mtose has imagined and created a university where Africa does not ask to be part of the intellectual discourse but leads it. It is under her stewardship that the University of Zululand has traversed through rough terrain to reach the status that it holds today, as a preeminent institution of African thought and creativity. The leadership of Professor Mtose has seen the university flourish in all aspects; this has received plaudits from across the higher
education spectrum. The legacy of Professor Mtose will be one where an ideology has been revolutionised into a reality. A university which has realised its true potential in becoming an institution on the cusp of taking its rightful place in Africa and in the global arena. Professor Mtose has developed a modernised institution, cognisant of its cultural heritage and geographic position while at the same time forging a path of academic relevance in a society expecting universities to be at the forefront of development and progress. It is through her leadership and visionary thinking that the University of Zululand is on a trajectory that will reshape commonly held views about rural-based institutions, and this will create a paradigm shift in the manner in which the debate on higher education in South Africa is articulated. Professor Mtose has become synonymous with the University oof Zululand and the university has become synonymous with the grace, poise and magnanimity of Professor Xoliswa Mtose
