"Professor Mphahlele's dream is the African Image; it is a dream of the retrieval of cultural identity. He has dreamed for other men a dream of decolonisation. His dream is formed with a formidable scholarship into the history of the language and culture of his people."
Professor A. Stadler
Head of Political Studies - Wits 1988

Es'kia Mphahlele's life's work is an inspiration to all of us. He remains the quintessential teacher who is at the same time the perpetual student. His commitment to education is unequivocal. His life demonstrates that commitment and his belief that the highest goal of education is enlightenment that leads to true emancipation.
Professor Kader Asmal, MP
Minister of Education

“Professor Es'kia Mphahlele's donation to this University must never be forgotten. In financial terms the value of this library runs into many millions of rands. Its intellectual and academic significance however is priceless. We convey our gratitude as South Africans who understand, Es'kia's deep and abiding love of his country can only be surpassed by his willingness to share knowledge so generously.”
Professor Taban Lo Liyong
Director Es'kia Mphahlele Centre for African Studies University Of Venda for Science and Technology

"Es'kia Mphahlele's position as a pioneer among the writers of Southern Africa is secure. He is more than a major figure in the intellectual resistance to apartheid; he is an eloquent exponent of African awareness and values: of African Humanism, of generosity, and “plain, heroic magnitude of mind".
Professor Guy Butler
Rhodes University - 1989

"The socio-political application of Ubuntu, one of the precepts Mphahlele has identified as key to African Humanism, is an example of ways in which culture has supported reconstruction and healing in the post apartheid South Africa. It also bears out the fact that Mphahlele's endeavour over the decades to identify, reclaim and advocate an African Humanism approach in education, nation building and the arts was not mere wool-gathering or whistling in the wind".
Ruth Obee
Themes Of Alienation And African Humanism Ohio University Press (1999)

"As a people, we Africans have almost always remained somewhat satisfied with merely being critical of the inadequacies of the system of education given to us, its poverty; bemoaning the fact that it was never really meant to uplift us intellectually. And this we did for generations, without ever pausing to consider precisely what we ourselves could do to get out of the mess. Yes, there is nothing wrong in attacking the poverty of this education, but there should have been something much more constructive than mere critisism. This we did not seem to think about over the years. Then came the Council for Black Education and Research, Zeke's (Eskia's) brainchild and the first ever attempt to tackle the crucial problem of what must be, what ought to be done, by none other than oursleves if we are to grow. Just like any other people, any other nation, anywhere in this chequered world. He simply recognised that words, no matter how sharp and strong, weren't enough. Something had to be done, and done by us".
Harry Mashabela

“… I would like to take a moment to address myself to the students who are here today. If you are studying or have an interest in Karl Marx, you must read Es'kia Mphahlele to be grounded in the African context of principles of socialism and Marxism. If you are studying or have an interest in, literature, education, philosophy, culture and politics you must read Es'kia Mphahlele.”
Muxe (Gessler) Nkondo
Vice Chancellor University of Venda 2001

"In the post Sharpeville era, Mphahlele had begun to search for more forcible ways of affirming black values and community culture. His monumental critical work, The African Image (1962) was an attempt to portray images of Africans: who they were within the context of a brutal history and an ancient humanism and how they give artistic expression to their ontology".
RUTH OBEE
Themes Of Alienation And African Humanism Ohio University Press (1999)

“Any society that has undergone major transformation has had thinkers who have observed and put forward theories on how society could work. Examples abound in history such as during the industrial revolution in Europe, the Japanese transition from traditional to a technologically advanced society and Paulo Freire in Latin America. Professor Mphahlele is one such social thinker who has convincing, scholarly researched views on the transformation of society.”
Joyce Dimakatso Mpofu
Social Researcher

“ ... from exile, on his return to us, Mphahlele brought back experience, hard-won against homesickness, of cultural administration, educational methods and scholarly advances, knowledge of comparative social organization in Europe and the United States as well as from countries of the African continent where he had lived and worked, about which we knew too little. We need his experience, his wisdom, and above all his keenly critical mind among us to achieve a South Africa and an African Renaissance to fulfil an Africa, in the words of Steve Biko, ‘self-defined, not defined by others’ politically, economically, socially, culturally, philosophically. The creation of an Africa not of the past, but that has never before existed.”
Nadine Gordimer
Writer/Nobel Laureate

“One fundamental aspect of the importance of Es’kia Mphahlele in South African intellectual and literary history is as a symbolic marker and demarcator of cultural beginnings and endings within the last season of the New African Movement. In this, he is singularly unique, without parallel or comparison within the whole history of the New African Movement from the moment of its launching by Pixley ka Isaka Seme …
Ntongela Masilela
Professor of World Literature – Pitzer College.

“The socio-political application of Ubuntu, one of the precepts Mphahlele has identified as key to African Humanism, is an example of ways in which culture has supported reconstruction and healing in the post apartheid South Africa. It also bears out the fact that Mphahlele’s endeavour over the decades to identify, reclaim and advocate an African Humanism approach in education, nation building and the arts was not mere wool-gathering or whistling in the wind”. “In the post Sharpeville era, Mphahlele had begun to search for more forcible ways of affirming black values and community culture. His monumental critical work, The African Image (1962) was an attempt to portray images of Africans: who they were within the context of a brutal history and an ancient humanism and how they give artistic expression to their ontology”.
Ruth Obee
Ohio University Press (1999)

“This collection (ES’KIA) reminds us that the ideas often peddled by politicians and other opinion makers as if they are new, their own inventions or developments, are in fact products of a long history of profound critical and self-interrogating intellectual and professional endeavours of the likes of Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Sol Plaatje, Steve Biko, Franz Fanon and Es’kia Mphahlele to mention only a few examples.”
Phaswane Mpe

Mphahlele, need I say, is more than a canonical writer. He belongs to a special category for which literary discourse must still develop a concept. To adapt the metaphorical language of numbers, he is both a cardinal and ordinal writer. Cardinal, because he is a writer of key importance. Ordinal, because he ranks among the great writers of Africa and the world. Even this, does not do justice to his importance.
Professor Andries Oliphant
University Of South Africa - UNISA

“Es’kia Mphahlele has through his narrative writings succeeded in developing and perfecting his concept of Afrikan Humanism with the result that it has been shaped into a coherent, nuanced and lucid theory or philosophy. His Afrikan Humanism is dynamic and pervasive not only in so far as defying cultural and geographical frontiers; it defines and reconstitutes itself according to the mutations of the historical, political and social milieu. It seeps through to pervade all spheres of life.” 
Dr. Lesibana Rafapa