Google Doodle Celebrates S. African Anti-apartheid Activist Mazisi Kunene

Google Doodle celebrated, on Thursday, the 92nd anniversary of Mazisi Kunene, an anti-apartheid activist and South African poet laureate.

Google appreciated Kunene for his phenomenal works that recorded the history of the Zulu people and their traditions, the preservation of which he advocated for passionately throughout his life.

Kunene was born on 12 May 1930 in Durban, in an eastern province now called KwaZulu-Natal. He loved writing short stories and poetry in Zulu since he was a child. By age 11, he was publishing his writings in local newspapers and magazines.

He called for the preservation of indigenous Zulu poetic traditions as his master’s thesis notably critiqued how Western literary traditions were diluting Zulu literature.

During the beginning of the apartheid movement, Kunene used his works to resist the government’s racist segregation system.

When the South African government cracked down on the resistance movement in the late 50s, exiling Kunene, he fled to the UK (and later the USA), where he helped start the anti-apartheid movement.

During this time, his work was banned in South Africa.

He wrote some of his seminal works in the UK, where he fled into exile after the South African government violently repressed the resistance movement.