Mazisi Kunene was one of Africa’s greatest poets and literary icons. He was a talented writer whose inspiration was the history of Zulu people, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the oral tradition of African literature.

Kunene stressed that his literary goal is the re-telling of African history in a way he believed would make it relevant and authentic to the non-African.

In 1972, Kunene became ANC director of finance in London, establishing the South African Exhibition Appeal which raised funds for the organisation. He received significant support from notable figures in the art world, including Pablo Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti and Rauschenberg.

He later left London for America, first teaching at the University of Iowa and Stanford University before joining the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1975 as a lecturer in African literature and Zulu. 

As apartheid began to crumble, Kunene decided to return to South Africa in 1993, the very year that UNESCO honoured him as Africa’s Poet Laureate. In 2005, he was named South Africa’s poet Laureate. He died on August 11, 2006.

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