Zintombizethu (zethu) Matebeni is a sociologist and writer whose work focuses on African Queer Studies. She joined the University of Fort Hare in 2021 as South Africa’s first recipient of the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Sexualities, Genders and Queer Studies. In 2017 she was the Presidential Visiting Professor at the Women’s Gender and Sexualities Studies (WGSS) Department at Yale University, USA. A year later she was awarded the African Humanities Program (AHP) Fellowship and the African Studies Association (ASA), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Presidential Fellow. She has edited various volumes on African sexualities and gender diversity including: Reclaiming African: queer perspectives on sexual and gender identities (2014); Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship and Activism (with Surya Munro and Vasu Reddy, 2018); and Beyond the Mountain: queer life in ‘Africa’s gay capital’ (with B Camminga, 2020). 

zethu has written over 40 academic journal articles and book chapters, some of which have been translated into Portuguese. She has also published short stories, poetry and essays for art exhibitions, the latest appearing in French at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France (The Power of My Hands, 2021). For the past three years she has been one of the editors of the South African Review of Sociology. She is also a visiting professor at the Nelson Mandela University’s Centre for Women and Gender Studies.

Photograph by Jabu C. Pereira