User:Phaswed

Edith Dinong Phaswana (nee Kekana) is an academic, scientist and a leader of social justice in South Africa. She was the interim director of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute (TMALI) at the University of South Africa from 2018 to 2020. Her research is based on African Development, Policy and Leadership.

Early life and Career

Dinong was born at 882 Moletsane, Soweto Johannesburg, South Africa to Ramolokoane Flora and Lesetja Petrus Kekana. The second of four children, one boy and three girls, Dinong was baptised at the then Dutch Reformed Church. Both her fathers and mothers family are part of the Royal Bloodline of the Kekana Amandebele a Zebediela, Limpopo Province where she was groomed to be the young woman she is today. As per tradition and custom, in 1994 the late Selaelo Clayton Phaswana asked for her hand in marriage and paid lobola dues to her family. Within six months of their union he died ina fatal car crash travelling with her two sisters leaving Dinong with a 3-month pregnancy. They were blessed with a  beautiful daughter named Maselaelo Phaswana.

After graduating from University of Pretoria Univeristy of Limpopo and Rand Afrikaans Universiteit, Dinong obtained her doctorate from London South Bank Universityin 2008 under the supervision of Trudy Harpham one of the project leaders of Young Lives: An International Study of Childhood and Poverty. She then relocated to South Africa as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Johannesburg she later became a member of the Faculty of Humanities. In 2014 she won the Humanities Distinguished Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2019, she was appointed Associate Professor at the University of South Africa where she also held position as interim head of TMALI beginning in 2018. She received the 2019 Mail & Guardian Top 100 Changing South Africa (Education Category). Dinong is co-editor of the 2020 award winning non-fiction edited volume known as the black academics voices: the south african experience. The book has been shortlisted for the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences in South Africa.