Lauretta Ngcobo

The daughter of teachers Rosa (née Cele) and Simon Gwina, Lauretta Gladys Nozizwe Duyu Gwina was born in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal,[6] and grew up there. She attended Inanda Seminary School, near Durban, going on to become the first woman from her area to study at the University of Fort Hare.[2] She taught for two years, then took a job with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria.[2] In 1956, she was a participant in the women's anti-pass march and was one of the main speakers.[2][7]

In 1957, she married Abednego Bhekabantu Ngcobo, a founder and member of the executive of the Pan Africanist Congress, who in 1961 was sentenced to two years' imprisonment under the Suppression of Communism Act.[2]

In 1963, facing imminent arrest, she fled the country with her two young children, moving to Swaziland, then Zambia and finally England, where she taught at primary school level for 25 years.[3] She was eventually appointed deputy head and then acting head of Lark Hall Infant School in Lambeth, south London,[8] where she was the only black staff member. In 1984 she became president of ATCAL (the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures), a campaigning group of teachers and writers promoting a more diverse curriculum in the British educational system.[2]

Ngcobo returned to South Africa with her family in 1994, following the election in which the African National Congress came to power. Her husband died in 1997.[6]

In South Africa she again taught for a while before becoming a Member of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature, where she spent 11 years before retiring in 2008.[4] She published many academic articles, attended many writers' conferences, and delivered papers at various universities.[14]

She died in hospital in Johannesburg, aged 84, on Tuesday, 3 November 2015, following a stroke.[1] The Sunday Times of South Africa obituary described her as a "writer and activist who gave vulnerable women a voice",[15] while Barbara Boswell of the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town wrote: "Lauretta Ngcobo's death has robbed us of a significant literary talent, freedom fighter, and feminist voice."[9]

In 2006, Ngcobo received the Lifetime Achievement Literary Award of the South African Literary Awards.[3]

In 2008, she was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga for her "excellent achievements in the field of literature and through her literary work championing the cause of gender equality in South Africa".[6][16]

She was named an eThekwini Living Legend in 2012, and in 2014 received an honorary doctorate of Technology in Arts and Design from Durban University of Technology.[1]

In 2021, her daughter Zikethiwe Ngcobo directed a 10-minute documentary entitled Lauretta: And They Did Not Die about her mother's struggles as a writer and activist, exploring her legacy and "transformatory impact on black women’s literature".[17]

Literary scholar Barbara Boswell edited the volume Lauretta Ngcobo: Writing as the Practice of Freedom, including analyses of Ngcobo's life, voice and legacy, as well as key texts.[18][19]

Novels

• Cross of Gold, novel (Prentice Hall, 1981, ISBN 978-0582785199)
• And They Didn't Die, novel (London: Virago Press, 1990, ISBN 978-1853811531). Extract in Margaret Busby (ed.), Daughters of Africa, 1992, pp. 407–411.

As editor

• Let It Be Told: Essays by Black Women Writers in Britain (Pluto Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0745302546; new edn Virago, 1988, ISBN 978-0860686330)
• Prodigal Daughters — Stories of South African Women in Exile (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1869142346)[6]

For children

• Fikile Learns to Like Other People (1994)[3]

• Barbara Boswell (editor), Lauretta Ngcobo: Writing as the Practice of Freedom, 2022. ISBN 978-0-7969-2624-1

• Dan Moshenberg, "And she didn’t die: Lauretta Ngcobo and the political economy of women’s 'vulnerability'", The Journalist, 17 November 2015.
• "Lauretta Ngcobo", South African History Online.