Mthuli ka Shezi was a South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n playwright and political activist. He was a student activist when he attended the University of Zululand

University of Zululand

The University of Zululand has been designated to serve as the only comprehensive tertiary educational institution north of the uThukela River in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Its new status is in accordance with South Africa's National Plan for Higher Education aimed at eradicating inequity and...

, and in 1972 he was elected the first vice president of the Black People's Convention

Black People's Convention

The Black People's Convention was founded at the end of 1972 as the Nationalist Liberatory Flagship of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa.The BCM was a product of three historicultural and ideological imperatives:...

. His writing reflected the struggle of recovering African identity in colonial and post-colonial societies, a topic which reflects his involvement in Steve Biko

Steve Biko

Stephen Biko was a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. Since his death in police custody, he has been called a martyr of the...

's Black Consciousness Movement

Black Consciousness Movement

The Black Consciousness Movement was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in...

 as well as the influence of Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...

.

In December 1972, Shezi was pushed in front of a moving train at Germiston

Germiston, Gauteng

Germiston is a city in the East Rand of Gauteng in South Africa. Germiston is now the seat of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality which includes much of the East Rand, and is also considered part of Greater Johannesburg.-History:...

 station (and thus killed) after coming to the defense of African women being drenched with water by a white station cleaner. He posthumously received the Order of Luthuli

Order of Luthuli

The Order of Luthuli is a South African honour. It was instituted on 30 November 2003, and is granted by the president of South Africa, for contributions to South Africa in the following fields: the struggle for democracy, building democracy and human rights, nation-building, justice and...

 for his "political leadership, outstanding contribution to the performing arts, and activism against apartheid"

He became a symbol for the struggle of black South Africans against the apartheid regime.

Quote

"I am black/
Black like my mother/
Black like the sufferers/
Black like the continent" - from the play Shanti published in 1972