Background

Benedict Wallet Vilakazi was born on January 6, 1906 at the Groutville Mission Station near Stranger, Natal, South Africa (now KwaDukuza, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). He was a fifth child of Mshini ka Makhwatha and Leah Hlongwane. His parents were Zulu tribe members and devout Christians.

Education

In 1923 Benedict Vilakazi received a teaching certificate from St. Francis College (Mariannhill Secondary Independent School). In 1934 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Africa. Because the University of Witwatersrand was the only institution to provide advanced courses in Zulu language and literature, Vilakazi’s chosen field, he postponed further study until 1936 when he was given a language assistantship in their Bantu Studies Department, becoming the first black South African to teach white South African students at the university level. In 1946 he became the first black South African to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

Career

After obtaining his teaching certificate in 1923, Benedict Vilakazi instructed classes at Mariannhill College (now St Francis College) and later at the Catholic seminary in Ixopo. During this period, Vilakazi wrote his first novel, Nje nempela ("Really and Truly"), and first volume of poetry, Inkondlo kaZulu, both of which received immediate critical acclaim. He is an author of Noma nini (1935), UDingiswayo kaJobe (1939), Nje nempela (1944).

Along with his growing fame as a poet and novelist, Vilakazi was developing a reputation as a linguistics scholar, publishing respected essays on Zulu language and literature. With the head of the department, C. M. Doke, Vilakazi wrote a Zulu-English dictionary.

Achievements

• Benedict Vilakazi stands supreme amongst Zulu poets. In his poetry, he combined elements of the tribal oral tradition with European poetic techniques. While he also described the Zulus’ way of life in his fiction and promoted their literature in his essays, his poems are considered his most eloquent and effective expression of black African concerns. Vilakazi Street in Soweto is named after him.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Zulu Horizons

    (This collection of poetry, includes Inkondlo kaZulu, tran...)

    1962
  • English-isiZulu / isiZulu-English Dictionary

    (A comprehensive English and Zulu Dictionary. )

    1948
  • Amal'ezulu

    (This is a collection of Zulu poetry.)

    1945
  • Inkondlo Kazulu

    (This book contains Zulu poems.)

    1935

Views

As a poet, Benedict Vilakazi was strongly influenced by the European Romantics, whose sense of alienation and belief in individual freedom and the perfectibility of humanity matched Vilakazi’s feelings about the subjugation of black South Africans and his optimism about change. The influence is most evident in such early poems as "Inqomfi" ("The Lark") and "We moya" ("Hail, Wind"), which are patterned after Percy Bysshe Shelley’s "To a Skylark" and "Ode to the West Wind," respectively.

Connections

Father:

Mshini ka Makhwatha

Mother:

Leah Hlongwane

References

• Contemporary Authors
  1998
• Four African literatures: Xhosa, Sotho, Zulu, Amharic Creative writing in the African languages dates for the most part from the early nineteenth century, when writing skill was introduced by European missionaries, conquerors and educationalists, who also brought the printing press, Western education and Western literary genres. The purpose of this book is to observe the process of birth and growth of modern literature in four African languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Southern Sotho and Amharic.
  1971