Prof Mtende Mhango

Mtende Mhango is a full professor and current Dean of the Faculty of Law at the National University of Lesotho, where he also serves as the inaugural Metropolitan Professorial Research Chair in Pension Law Studies. Mhango is also a Research Associate at the University of Limpopo, School of Law, and a rated researcher by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. Mhango holds a Bachelor of Arts from Morehead States University, Juris Doctorate from Michigan State University, Master of Laws from Wayne State University, and Doctor of Laws from the University of South Africa, which focused on the political question theory in South Africa’s jurisprudence. For the last decade, he has been engaged in research in public law. Notable among his publications in this regard are his series on “separation of powers, justiciability and constitutional adjudication”, published in leading South African and international law journals. One of his recent books is Justiciability of Political Questions in South Africa: A Comparative Analysis (Eleven International Publishing 2019), which examines the role of politics in constitutional adjudication and its effects on the political governance of a country. Mhango’s other research interests are pension fund regulation, where he focuses on emerging pension jurisprudence and recent pension reforms in the South African Development Community (SADC). Through his research, he has contributed to pension reforms in Lesotho, Malawi, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and Botswana. His recent book in this area is Pension Law and Death Benefits: Law and Policy Harmonisation in the Southern African Development Community, published by Juta in March 2022. Mhango’s experience as a pension lawyer has enabled him to serve as an Independent Board Member of some of the largest pension funds in the SADC region, including the Municipal Employees Pension Fund (with assets over $1.3 billion) and the Debswana Pension Fund (with assets over $700 million).