Dr Madhlozi Moyo

Dr Madhlozi Moyo is a classical studies researcher interested in Classical Presences in Zimbabwe. He is currently an AfOx TORCH Visiting Fellow at the Department of Classics, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme.   

Madhlozi is head of the Department and lecturer at the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical studies at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He served as a senior lecturer in classical studies at the University of Zimbabwe and an external examiner at the Department of Classics, University of Cape town. Madhlozi is currently working on a monograph entitled “Classical Presences in Zimbabwe: Colonisation, education, and the Arts”, with Bloomsbury publishers.    

Madhlozi’s proposed book will look at the Classical influences, perceptions and receptions in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, his original homeland and the location of his initial university education. The volume looks at the history of Classics being taught in the school system, at the university level and the significance of Latin and Greek in the Rhodesian and Zimbabwean public service. He digs into the archives of classical journals (in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Oxford) to provide an overview of the dissemination of Classics. Madhlozi also looks at the Courtauld collection of ancient Greco-Roman and related coins housed at the University of Zimbabwe library. Classical influences are also examined in buildings across Zimbabwe, and of particular interest will be a study of how Great Zimbabwe ruins and traditional Shona sculpture can help us to understand more about the Classical world. Classical and Zimbabwean texts are also analysed and compared through reception and translation theories, demonstrating how sustained transnational poetic discourse employs this ancient and modern pairing to expand notions of literary origin and redefine poetry’s relationship to human existence.   

While at the University of Oxford, Madhlozi’s research project, “Classical Presences in Zimbabwe: Colonisation, education and the Arts”, will be the first comprehensive treatment of the Classical presence in Zimbabwe. His book will examine the long and complex history of how Classics have been taught, received, and influenced the country’s education system, architecture, and literature.  

• “Responses to Crisis: Cicero in Zimbabwe”, in Masters, S. Nzungu, I and Parker, G. (eds.), (U) Mzantsi Classics: Dialogues in Decolonisation from Southern Africa, Liverpool University Press and African Minds, Cape Town & Liverpool, (2022), pp 149- 166.
• “Fauna and erotic didactics in Archaic Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures” in Canevaro, L. G. and O’Rourke, D. (eds.), Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond: Knowledge, Power, Tradition, The Classical Press of Wales (2019).
• “Animals and power dynamics in ancient Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures: A comparative analysis”, in Mangena, F. & McClymont, J. D. Philosophy, Race and Multiculturalism in Southern Africa: Zimbabwean Philosophical Studies, III, The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy,
• Washington D.C. (2018).
• “Classical allusion in Marechera’s prose works”, in Hamilton, G. (ed.) Reading Marechera, James Currey, London, (2012).
• Poetry in, From where the Wind blows: Anthology of modern Zimbabwean poetry, (edd. Mangena, T., and Nyambi, O.), Mambo Press, Gweru, (2012).
• Poetry in, Ghetto Diary and other poems, (ed. Mbire, M.Z.), Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, (2011).
• A Brief History of the Department of Religious Studies, Classics, and Philosophy, (ed. McClymont, J.) University of Zimbabwe, (2005).