ANN ARBOR—Njabulo Ndebele, vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Michigan during spring commencement April 26.

The Board of Regents approved Ndebele’s honorary degree a month before it considers other recipients so that an announcement could be made when President Mary Sue Coleman visits South Africa and the University of Cape Town (UCT) later this month.

As the vice-chancellor since 2000, Ndebele is credited with transforming the UCT into a diverse multiracial institution.

He also is known for expanding the institution’s research mission by encouraging new partnerships within the country and internationally. This has included increasing the number of research doctoral students at the university.

Ndebele has made AIDS/HIV front and center at UCT, both in terms of services to affected students and efforts to address the growing pandemic.

Regarded as one of his country’s most accomplished writers, Ndebele’s “Fools and Other Stories,” a chronicle of life in a black township under apartheid, won the Noma Award in 1983 for best book published in Africa. He also is author of “The Cry of Winnie Mandela,” “Bonolo and the Peach Tree,” and “South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary.” His poetry also has been published widely.

Ndebele was born in Johannesburg but was sent to neighboring Swaziland for his education because of South Africa’s racist restrictions on schooling.

He returned to South Africa and worked as a teacher in a secondary school. He later enrolled at the University of Botswana Lesotho Swaziland, where in 1973 he received his B.A degree. He also earned an M.A. from Cambridge University in 1975 and a Ph.D. at the University of Denver in 1983.

In 1991 he became head of the literature department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The following year he became vice-rector at the University of Western Cape, and in 1993 was named a vice-chancellor and principal at the University of the North.