Pumla is a feminist author and Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Nelson Mandela University, where she holds the South African Research Chair in African Feminist Imagination. She has authored five books, including the landmark 'What is Slavery to me? Postcolonial/Slave memory in post-apartheid South Africa' (2010), and the 2016 Alan Paton Award winning 'Rape: A South African Nightmare and Female Fear Factory'. Pumla's coinage "the female fear factory" earned the 2023 Breakthrough Award in Humanities and Social Sciences by the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin.
Outside the academy, Pumla sits on the Board of Trustees of the African feminist strategic litigation firm, Women's Legal Centre, and previously chaired the Board of the 1in9 Campaign, a feminist non-profit. She has also served on the boards of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Press and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR).

At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Pumla was involved in the program Black Feminism and the Polycrisis.