Mafika Pascal Gwala (5 October 1946 – 5 September 2014) was a contemporary South African poet and editor, writing in English and Zulu.
Mafika Gwala was born and grew up in Verulam, north of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.
He worked in a factory as a clerk, an industrial relations officer, a high school teacher, and a guest university lecturer, aside from writing and editing.
Gwala was active in the struggle against apartheid and a leading light of the 1970s Black Consciousness movement, of which he says:We didn’t take Black Consciousness as a kind of Bible, it was just a trend, which was a necessary one because it meant bringing in what the white opposition [to apartheid] couldn’t bring into the struggle.
[1]In 1982, Gwala published a book of Black Consciousness poetry in a collection called No More Lullabies.