Adv Mojankunyane Gumbi the new chancellor of Univen

Adv Mojankunyane Gumbi has been appointed as the new chancellor of the University of Venda (Univen).

According to a media statement by Univen, the appointment was approved by the Council during a virtual meeting on Friday, 22 May. Her term of office is from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2024.

Gumbi takes over the reins from former Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who served two terms in the position.

The vice-chancellor and principal of Univen, Dr Bernard Nthambeleni, said that the university was grateful to have a female chancellor for the first time. He added that Gumbi joined Univen at the right time “when the University is shifting towards a new strategic direction, which is intended to position the University for impact and relevance”.  The university’s new strategic direction for 2021 to 2025 will be effective as from 2021.

Gumbi is the founder of Mojanku Gumbi Advisory Services, a Johannesburg-based business-advisory firm that maintains a strategic partnership with the Washington-based Albright Stonebridge Group.

She was a special advisor to former President Thabo Mbeki from 1999 to 2008. Before that, from 1994 to 1999, she was an advisor to then deputy president Mbeki. She was involved in peace-making initiatives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Comoros, Sudan, Lesotho, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Iran, and the Middle East.

According to the statement, Adv Gumbi also advised on domestic policy issues “including the reform of the local healthcare industry, the expansion of South African industry to the rest of Africa and the world, banking and mining sector reforms”.

She was one of South Africa’s principal negotiators at the Seattle and Doha rounds of the World Trade Organization, and served as Pres Mbeki’s personal representative to the G8, where she played a leading role in the establishment of the G5 Group (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa). She served also as Mbeki’s personal representative in the Progressive Governance Network.

Gumbi was an attorney from 1984 and an advocate from 1993. In these capacities, she defended political activists from all political organizations in South Africa. She also acted as the head of the adjudication secretariat of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) during South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. She was involved in the resolution of all disputes arising out of those elections.

She holds law degrees from the South African Universities of the North (now University of Limpopo), and Witwatersrand, and a certificate in Trial Advocacy from the University of Texas. She serves and has served on the boards of many companies, trusts and philanthropic associations, including the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, the Open Society Foundation, African Bank, LexisNexis, PPC, the Southern African Political and Economic Trust (SAPES), the Black Lawyers Association and the Thabo Mbeki Foundation.

She served as a member of the council of the then Technikon Witwatersrand, the council of the then University of the North and was the ombudsperson of the University of Johannesburg.

News - Date: 02 June 2020

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