Mazisi Raymond Kunene (12 May 1930 – 11 August 2006) was a South African poet best known for his epic Zulu poem Emperor Shaka the Great. While in exile from South Africa’s apartheid regime, Kunene was an active supporter and organiser of the antiapartheid
movement in Europe and Africa. He later taught at the University of California, Los Angeles,and become Africa’s and South Africa’s first poet laureate.
Kunene wrote and published poetry from very early in his life. His works were written originally in Zulu and then translated into English. In 1966, his works were banned by the Apartheid government of South Africa. In 1969, he wrote an introduction to the translation by John Berger and Anna Bostock of Aimé Césaire’s Return to My Native Land.
In 1970, Kunene published Zulu Poems, an anthology of poems ranging from “moral reflection to political commentary”. In Emperor Shaka the Great, published in English in 1979, Kunene tells the story of the rise of the Zulu people under Shaka.
World Literature Today contributor Christopher Larson described it as “a monumental undertaking and achievement.” Anthem of the Decades: A Zulu Epic published in English in 1981, tells the Zulu legend of how death came to humankind. In 1982, Kunene published asecond collection of poems titled The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain: Poemscontaining 100 of his poems. This collection had a particular emphasis on socio-political topics.
Unodumehlezi Kamenzi was published in 2017 on the tenth anniversary of his death. This book is the isiZulu edition of Emperor Shaka the Great and embraces Kunene’s original dream to have his poem published as intended in the original isiZulu form.
Kunene returned to South Africa in 1992, where he taught at the University of Natal until his retirement.
UNESCO made him Africa’s poet laureate in 1993 and in 2005 he became South Africa’s first poet laureate.
Ukumbulelwa Ngempilo |
A Vision of Life
1979
Poem
North court, Level 3
Translation by Sandile Ngidi
