PHILOSOPHER KING MAZISI KUNENE: A LIFE IN SERVICE

IN MAY, the month iconic Zulu poet, freedom fighter and poet laureate Mazisi Kunene was born, we are called upon to rededicate ourselves to selfand collective renewal.

Good poets and philosophers like Kunene should not just fill our hearts with epic joy, but also be the fresh salt that wakes us from complacency and the folly of thinking we have arrived, Yithi oNgqo Shishilizi.

In recalling Kunene’s life, we are remembering a life rooted in the service of the people. This celebration gives us an opportunity to remember, with fondness, Mazisi kaMdabuli weKunene, born on May 12, 1930 at Amahlongwa on the South Coast of our beautiful city, Durban.

Had he lived, ubaba uMntimande would have celebrated his 91st birthday on Wednesday. Although we were saddened when the literary giant left us on 11 August, 2006, we continue to find solace in the fact that great thinkers and great artists do not die.

Kunene’s life and work bring so much pride and sense that in him, Africa, the African Diaspora, South Africa, and indeed KZN have an illustrious ancestor and timeless lodestar.

The eminent poet, scholar, selfless freedom fighter and one of the pioneering ANC leaders in exile is a source of immense pride to all of us. Mazisi Kunene’s is a salutary reminder that the freedom for a liberated South Africa entailed immeasurable sacrifices and sweat from scores of our people.

Mentored by, among others, legendary ANC leaders such as ANC president Chief Albert Luthuli, Moses “Stimela” Mabhida and Robert Resha, Kunene was a committed ANC activist in Durban in the 1950s and was integral in mobilising for the Defiance Campaign in this province of KZN.

Exiled in 1959, first to Lesotho, where he taught at the Roma University, he was integral in the founding of the ANC mission in the UK and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. An MA Arts graduate from the University of Natal (now UKZN), he dedicated the greater part of his intellectual life to the advancement of indigenous language writing, especially Zulu, his mother tongue.

Inspired by, among others, by Dr BW. Vilakazi, the pre-eminent Zulu poet, Kunene sought to compose poetry that echoed the rich and complex traditions of izimbongi zasemandulo/oral poets of the ages, such as Zulu royal court poets, Magolwane kaMkhathini Jiyane and Mshongweni.

Furthermore, he sought to elevate modern Zulu poetry to the highest standards attainable, seeking to make this poetry epic songs of history, pride and fortitude. To read a Mazisi Kunene poem is to be made to realise that to be African is to belong to a long line of heroes, thinkers, philosophers and men and women of great integrity.

A contemporary and dear friend of another Zulu poet, JC “Bulima Ngiyeke” Dlamini, Kunene, together with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, stood firm in articulating the ideas of African epistemology and the decolonial turn, before even these terms were in vogue. More than most of his peers at the time, he understood well that our African languages, like any languages in the world, are repositories of critical ancestral knowledge systems and ways of being. He stood firm in his stubborn assertion that African languages had a right to breathe.

For Kunene, “African oral literature is not just an antithesis of a written literature, but a development of a more complex literary genre which has used to the maximum the social and linguistic potential. It is a form that has evolved a special set of principles necessary for the socialisation of thought. Its preservation and interpretation of history aim at reinforcing the all-powerful fundamental law of humanity – umthetho wobuntu.”

Listen to Kunene speaking to now, and right into the future:

Those who claim the monopoly of truth Blinded by their own discoveries of power Curb the thrust of their own fierce vision For there is not one eye over the universe But a seething nest of rays ever dividing and ever linking us