Lauretta Ngcobo

Lauretta Ngcobo (born 1931) is a South African novelist and essayist.^[1] After being in exile between 1963 and 1994, she now lives in Durban.^[2]

Background

The daughter of Simon Gwina, she was born in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal,^[3] grew up there, and was educated at the University of Fort Hare. She married Abednego Bhekabantu Ngcobo, a founder and member of the executive of the Pan Africanist Congress. In 1963, facing imminent arrest, the family fled the country, moving to Swaziland, then Zambia and finally England, where she taught school for 25 years.^[1] Ngcobo returned to South Africa in 1994. Her husband died in 1997.^[3]

In South African she taught for a while before becoming a Member of the KwaZulu Natal Legislature, where she spent eleven years before retiring in 2008.^[2]

Awards

In 2006, she received the Lifetime Achievement Literary Award of the South African Literary Awards.^[1] In 2008, she was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga for her work in literature and in promoting gender equality.^[3]

Selected works

• Cross-of Gold (1981), novel
• Let It Be Told: black women writers in Britain (1987), editor
• And They Didn't Die (1990), novel
• Fikile learns to like other people (1994), children's book^[1]
• Prodigal Daughters — Stories of South African Women in Exile (2012), editor^[3]

References