Mazisi Kunene
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Mazisi (Raymond) Kunene (born May 12, 1930 - died August 11, 2006) was a South African poet best known for his poem Emperor Shaka the Great.
Kunene was born in Durban and undertook a Master of Arts at the University of Natal. He won a Bantu Literary Competition in 1956 and left for London to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Kunene was affiliated with the African National Congress during his career. He was Head of Department at University College in Rome, Lesotho as well as becoming a Professor of African literature at the University of California, Los Angeles.
His works were written originally in Zulu and then translated into English. Emperor Shaka the Great tells the story of the rise of the Zulu under Shaka and was published in English in 1979. World Literature Today contributor Christopher Larson described it as a "a monumental undertaking and achievement by any standards." [1]
Anthem of the Decades:A Zulu Epic published in English in 1981 tells the Zulu legend of how death came to mankind. A collection of poems called The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain: Poems containing 100 of his poems was published in 1982.
Kunene returned to South Africa in 1992 where he taught at the University of Natal until his retirement. He died in August 2006 in Durban after a lengthy illness. [2]
[edit] References
- ^ World Literature Today, summer 1983, cited in "Mazisi Kunene Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
- ^ South African Broadcasting Corporation, "African poet professor dies at age 76" August 12, 2006
