Pretoria - Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, has paid tribute to the late Professor Mbulelo Mzamane, saying his passing is a monumental loss to the academic and literary community.
“Professor Mzamane distinguished himself as one of our country’s finest scholars of rare breed... his passing is a monumental loss to the academic and literary community, particularly in the wake of concerted efforts aimed at placing humanities at the centre stage in our higher education institutions,” Nzimande said on Thursday.
Academic, poet and storyteller Prof Mzamane passed away on Sunday. He was the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare and has also been a distinguished visiting professor at a number of universities within the country and abroad.
As a distinct educationist, Mzamane was scheduled to chair a panel discussion at the first Annual Conference of the Academic and Non-Fiction Authors on “Policies and practices that relate to indigenous languages in education in the 20 years since democracy, focusing on how best to incorporate indigenous languages in the school curriculum” next month.
The late President Nelson Mandela once described him as a “visionary leader and one of South Africa’s greatest intellectuals”. – SAnews.gov.za
