Dr Fikile Vilakazi-Alberts is former director of the Coalition of African Lesbians, a pan African radical feminist organization that advocates for the rights of lesbian women in Africa. She has been engaged on LGBTQIA+ activism with various organizations in South Africa including the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, Forum for the Empowerment of Women and OUT LGBTQIA+ organization amongst others. She served as a board member of the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Coalition, based in New York.
Her activism strides to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights in Gambia and the Office on the Status of Women in New York. She has experience of organising on sexual orientation, gender identity, expression and sex characteristics [SOGIESC] in most countries of the African Continent, more specifically in Southern Africa, West Africa and East Africa.
In addition to LGBTQIA+ activism, she centers herself in women’s rights, migrants, people living with HIV/AIDS, people with disabilities, domestic workers, sex workers and survivors of gender-based violence and femicide struggles, the majority of whom are black, brown and women. She has vast experience in the intersections of gender, sexuality, spirituality, power and its dynamics to social relations of people, power, process, partnerships, politics and governance nationally, regionally and internationally. Dr Fikile Vilakazi-Alberts holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of KwaZulu Natal.
She is also a PhD Candidate in Social and Public Policy with the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland focusing on the comparison of the professionalization of traditional medicine in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa [BRICS]. She is President of the Alumni of 2023 on the study of the Chinese Public Health System in the context of Chinese Traditional Medicine at the Southern Medical University of China, 2023 – 2027. She is the chairperson of the Interim Traditional Health Practitioners Council of South Africa, 2023 – 2024. She is also the chairperson of the Task Team on Traditional Health, Indigenous Spiritualities and Ancestral Wellness for the Student Development and Support Services Committee of the University of the Western Cape since 2024.
She is also an indigenous human rights activist and isangoma from Amajoye Traditional Health Association, known indigenously as Impande yakwaMajoye. She is a socio-political analyst of current socio-economic and political affairs globally, a scholar, a thinker and a keen reader. She is currently the Director of the Gender Equity Unit at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Her activism, scholarship, research and publication interest are interdisciplinary and includes gender, sexuality, feminism, youth, women, LGBTQIA+, traditional health, governance, global affairs, indigeneity and humanity.