Mazisi (Raymond) Kunene (12 May 1930 – 11 August 2006) was a South African poet best known for his poem Emperor Shaka the Great. While in exile from South Africa's apartheid regime, Kunene was an active supporter and organizer of the anti-apartheid movement in Europe and Africa. He would later teach at UCLA and become Africa's and South Africa's poet laureate.
Kunene was born in Durban, in the modern province of KwaZulu-Natal. From very early he began writing poetry and short stories in Zulu, and by age eleven he was being published in local papers. He later undertook a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Natal in Zulu and history and later a Master of Arts in Zulu Poetry. His Master's thesis was titled An Analytical Survey of Zulu Poetry, Both Traditional and Modern. There he criticized the changing nature of Zulu literature, and its emulation of the Western tradition. He won a Bantu Literary Competition in 1956 and left for London to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in 1959.