KUNENE (Raymond) Mazisi (Biography)

KUNENE MAZISI (Biography)

Nationality: South African.

Born: Mazisi ka Mdabuli Kunene, in Durban, Natal, 12 May 1930.

Education: Natal University, B.A. (honors) in Zulu and history, M.A. in Zulu Poetry; attended School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1959.

Family: Married Mabowe Mathabo in 1973; four children.

Career: Head of branch of African Studies, University College of Roma, Lesotho; overseer of schooling for South African United Front; individual from Anti-Apartheid and Boycott development in Britain, 1959-68; boss agent, African National Congress in Europe and United States, 1962, and overseer of money, 1972; visiting teacher of African writing, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; head of African Studies, University of Iowa; academic partner, then, at that point, teacher of African writing and dialects, University of California, Los Angeles. Part, Faculty of Humanities, University of Natal, Durban. Has stood firm on footholds in the Pan-African Youth development and the Committee of African Organizations. Grants: Winner, Bantu Literary Competition, 1956. Address: Department of African Literature and Language, University of California, 405 Hilgard, Los Angeles, California 90024, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Zulu Poems. New York, Africana Publishing Corporation, 1970.

Ruler Shaka the Great: A Zulu Epic. London, Heinemann, 1979.

Hymn of the Decades: A Zulu Epic Dedicated to the Women of Africa. London, Heinemann, 1981.

The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain: Poems. London, Heinemann, 1982.*

Basic Studies: “Contemporary Samples of English-Speaking African Poetry” by Kofi Awoonor, in The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara, New York, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1975; “Past, Present, and Future in African Poetry” by Ken Goodwin, in SPAN (Murdoch, Australia), 13, October 1981; “Impacts of Exile” by Anthony Delius, in The Times Literary Supplement (London), 4128, 14 May 1982; “Mazisi Kunene” by K.L. Goodwin, in Understanding African Poetry: A Study of Ten Poets, London, Heinemann, 1982; “Verse” by Ursula A. Barnett, in A Vision of Order: A Study of Black South African Literature in English (1940-1980), Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1983; “Vernacular Poetry” by Jacques Alvarez-Pereyre, in The Poetry of Commitment in South Africa, London, Heinemann, 1984; “Verse, Humanism and Apartheid: A Study of Mazisi Kunene’s Zulu Poems” by Chidi Maduka, in Griot: Official Journal of the Southern Conference on Afro-American Studies (Berea, Kentucky), 4(1-2), Winter/Summer 1985; “Kunene’s Shaka and the Idea of the Poet As Teacher” by John Haynes, in Ariel: A Review of International English Literature (Calgary, Alberta), 18(1), January 1987; “Super-Shaka: Mazisi Kunene’s Emperor Shaka the Great” by Z. Mbongeni Malaba, in Research in African Literatures (Columbus), 19(4), Winter 1988; “Examples of Oral Poetic Trends in West and South African Poetry: Atukwei Okai and Mazisi Kunene” by Ohaeto Ezenwa, in The Literary Griot: International Journal of Black Oral and Literary Studies (Wayne, New Jersey), 8(1), Spring 1989; “‘Sacred Geography’ in Poems by Mazisi Kunene,” in Literature, Nature and the Land: Collected AUETSA Papers, altered by Nigel Bell and Meg Cowper-Lewis, Kwa-Dlangezwa, Natal, University of Zululand, 1993; “The Writer As Philosopher: Interview with Mazisi Kunene” by Vasu Reddy, in South African Journal of African Languages, 16(4), November 1996.

Essential highlights of Mazisi Kunene’s verse are that everything his distributed work is created in Zulu and converted into English by the writer and that all that he composes is focused in the customary convictions, practices, and shows of the Zulu public. An expert on Nguni writing, he is exceptional to pass on to English perusers the characteristics of what is basically an oral writing, with its rich social legacy and solid public pride. Thusly, his legendary verse is execution arranged and expository, with a strong story stimulus. In a prologue to every volume Kunene clarifies for the peruser important parts of Zulu thought and artistic shows, like the spot of the person corresponding to precursors and the capacity of the recognition sonnet. Simultaneously he clarifies his dismissal of Eurocentric models for an African perspective.

KUNENE, (Raymond) Mazisi — Kunene Mazisi

Kunene’s most memorable volume, Zulu Poems (1970), mirrors a wide assortment of encounters and topic, going from affection to war and from moral reflection to political discourse. It is given a feeling of solidarity by a Blakean effortlessness of vision communicated in African symbolism. The accompanying lines are from “Mother Earth, or the Folly of National Boundaries”:

  Why should those at the end of the earth
   Not drink from the same calabash
   And build their homes in the valley of the earth
   And together grow with our children?

Head Shaka the Great (1979) is a fantastic epic of approximately seventeen thousand lines. It has been gone after for its apparently careless depiction of Shaka, yet a cautious perusing shows that Kunene is less worried about the glorification of the Zulu ruler than with the degree to which he addresses and gives articulation to the common qualities, history, and philosophical vision of the Zulu public. Shaka’s obliteration results from his mocking of customs established in the normal powers administering earth and man.

Kunene’s next significant work, Anthem of the Decades (1981), which is devoted to the “ladies of Africa,” genuine and incredible, praises the reciprocal patterns of creation and obliteration and of contention and compromise that oversee mankind’s set of experiences as reflected in the oral legacy of the African public. Comprised of fifteen cycles, Anthem will in general slip by into instructional manner of speaking, however there are entries of expressive force.

Kunene’s second assortment of sonnets, The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain (1982), accomplishes a reverberation and sureness of touch missing from its ancestor. Sociopolitical concerns (“Police Raid,” “Demise of the Miners,” “The Rise of the Angry Generation”) are incorporated into an overall vision or dream of harmony, of public life lived in solidarity with the earth and in the illumination of tribal insight. The symbolism is natural, striking, and free from antique: By

   You are born of the mist and the dream.
   Do not move, do not disturb the eternal cycles
   But weave into them the sacred knots of the rainbow
   And the generations that are to come must sing.

Poems

Cursed shall be the one whose passage in this world
Evades humaneness, engenders greed and hoarding
Cursed is he wallowing alone in caskets of wealth and
Counting rosary beads of accumulated cars
To be human is to humbly cherish the sweat of your toil
In measured style of decency and appreciation
To be human is to consider the plight of the needy
As they also are children of the earth
Yes, men and women of this blessed land Mazisi Kunene

I shall invisibly follow you into the sacred vaults
Deep in the belly of earth where you hide your burning poems
From a distance watching you raise secret words as the torch
Nay, the comet illuminating the arc to the depths of sunsets

Questions And Answers

Q: What type of poet is Mazisi Kunene?
A: Mazisi (Raymond) Kunene (12 May 1930 – 11 August 2006) was a South African poet best known for his translation of the epic Zulu poem Emperor Shaka the Great.
Q: What is the poem first day after the war about?
A: This is a celebratory poem and focuses on celebrating the freedom that comes to a people after oppression. The war is the struggle for freedom of those who were oppressed . The poem focuses on the celebrations that occur amongst the victorious immediately after apartheid.
Q: When was Mazisi Kunene born?
A: May 12, 1930 Mazisi Kunene, in full Mazisi Raymond Kunene, (born May 12, 1930, Durban, S.Af. —died Aug. 11, 2006, Durban), South African-born poet, whose work reflects the influences of traditional Zulu poets.
Q: What happened Lucky Kunene?
A: In 1997, he was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme for which he served six years in prison. After his prison stint, Kunene became a motivational speaker and became active in local politics. He later opened a club called ZAR and became known for throwing lavish parties.
Q: What is the poem after the war about?
A: In After the War, poet brings awareness to how the war-torn soldier attempts to reestablish their self in a society they have been isolated from for so many years through use of free verse and repetitive phrases, which further reinforces the theme throughout the poem.
Q: What is the Zulu girl poem about?
A: The Zulu Girl by Roy Campbell focuses on the pitiable plight of African people who are dominated and exploited. The Zulu were the most powerful tribe in SA. This poem emphasises their subservience. This poem is about a Zulu mother feeding her baby.
Q: Who is the old man in first day after the war?
A: The old man refers to the elderly who had been subjected to apartheid for many years. A festival is demanded because they now have the freedom that they were previously denied. They need to celebrate their freedom. We asked for all the first fruits of the season.
Q: Is Kunene a Zulu?
A: Mazisi Kunene was born on 12 May 1930 in Amahlongwa, Southern KwaZulu Natal to a Swazi mother and a Zulu father.
Q: In what language was Emperor Shaka the Great originally compiled?
A: Emperor Shaka the Great is an epic poem based on the Zulu oral tradition, compiled in Zulu then translated by South African poet Mazisi Kunene.
Q: Is Jerusalema based on a true story?
A: Production. Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema is based on the story of Lucky Kunene, an underworld figure who in the 1990s took over real estate in the Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa.