Mazisi Kunene

Mazisi Raymond Kunene ( born May 12, 1930 in Durban, † August 11, 2006 ) was a South African poet, writer and civil rights activist.

Life

Kunene was born in Durban in the eastern province of Natal and grew up there. He studied the literature of the Zulu at the University of Natal, in 1956 he earned his doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies ( SOAS ) in London.

With his poems in his mother tongue isiZulu he fought against apartheid and had to flee into exile in 1959. He founded the anti-apartheid movement in Britain and in 1962 the United Nations representative of the African National Congress for Europe and Africa. On behalf of UNESCO, he was a visiting professor at diverse universities; 1975 to 1992 he was Associate Professor of African Literature at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1993 he returned to South Africa and from then taught at the University of Natal (later University of KwaZulu -Natal).

Mazisi Kunene received numerous awards; it was 1993, the first Poet Laureate of the UNESCO Arab and African countries. He died of a cancerous disease and left behind his wife Mathabo, his daughter and his sons Lamakhosi Zosukuma, Ra and Rre.

Kunene's poem Europe, you laughed about the blind was for the concert cycle of 17 songs for 2 recorders, chitarrone, viola da gamba and harpsichord and 16 texts about the exile of the black earth of this world ( 1992) by composer Friedemann Schmidt- Mechau used.

Works

• Zulu Poems, 1970
• Emperor Shaka the Great, 1970
• Anthem of the Decades 1981
• The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain, 1982