Abstract:
This mini dissertation examines the influence of the Black Consciousness
Philosophy on Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali’s Post-Colonial protest poetry. This is done
in the form of analysing selected poems to highlight the influence that the Black
Consciousness Philosophy had on the poems that Mtshali wrote about the
experiences of black people under a suppressive apartheid system.
The aim of this study was to explore how Mtshali’s poetry exposed the extent to
which black people had been socio-economically deprived and misled to a negative
and false belief of their inferiority and subservience. The title of the mini dissertation,
suggests that Black Consciousness poetry claims to have had an influence on the
protest poetry of Oswald Mtshali. The poems were analysed to ascertain this. The
poems were examined with the express aim of identifying and understanding their
themes and the socio-economic context from which they emanate.