Niki Nicholas Nkuna Biography

BIOGRAPHY
Niki Nicholas Nkuna was born in the Limpopo province, South Africa, at a place called Burgersfort in 1957. He attended primary school 10 kilometres from home. The primary school belonged to the Roman Catholic Mission at a place called Sibidikane. He developed interest in literature during his secondary school years, encouraged by school mates and teachers’ comments, about his English compositions which were often well written. However his interest in reading English novels, mainly classic novels, magazines and newspapers developed during his last years in primary school. Newspaper reading became a serious past time due to the volatile political situation in South Africa in the 80’s up to the early 90’s.

He started working in 1981 as a teacher, at a secondary school in a place called Phiring, about 28 kilometres from his home town. He enjoyed teaching. He thought English, History and Geography. However his term as a teacher was short lived. He left teaching after a year and joined his brother in Johannesburg, who worked for a company called Blue Ribbon Bakery, a division of the Premier Milling Group. He was convinced by his brother to leave teaching because he could not understand why his younger brother who’s better educated than him should earn less than him.

Reading newspapers voraciously, he became politicised and thus began to write in response to what he read in the newspaper articles. He wrote a lot of letters to the newspapers most of which were publicised.

In the mid 80s, when PW Botha, the South African Apartheid Prime Minister, made the rubicon speech, which most newspaper commentators said he ‘failed to cross the rubicon, ’ apartheid laws were made stringent. That made him to stop writing to the newspapers and resorted to reading motivational books and writing quotes. He once mentioned to his colleagues that he does not see the reason why he should quote other people all the time in his writings or when he makes presentations or speeches.

All these years he has been an avid reader and a writer but he never ernestly thought of writing poetry until 1989. He wrote his first poem about the death of Samora Machel, the then President of Mozambique in 1986, who was assassinated by the South African Apartheid Security Forces and died in a plane crash. That did not ignite Nick’s interest in poetry although he wrote three poems during that period. He also began to write short stories which he rarely shared with friends or family members.