Noni Jabavu

Helen Nontando (Noni) Jabavu (20 August 1919[1]-19 June 2008) was a South African writer and journalist, one of the first African women to pursue a successful literary career and the first black South African woman to publish books of autobiography.[2][3] She became the first African woman to be the editor of a British literary magazine when in 1961 she took on the editorship of The New Strand, a revived version of The Strand Magazine, which had closed in 1950.[4]

In the words of poet Makhosazana Xaba: "One only has to read her two books (Drawn in Colour and The Ochre People) to realize just how skilled she was as a memoirist. Her journalistic column editorials demonstrate a reflective style that must have been unusual for her times. While interviewing Wally Serote who was living in Botswana during the same time as Noni, I learned something that confirmed my initial thoughts on her. 'We men, she said, did not know how to relate to her (Noni). She was a woman living far ahead of our times.' This speaks volumes considering Serote himself is a world-wise literary and cultural giant."

Biography

Noni Jabavu was born in Middledrift[5] in the Eastern Cape into a family of intellectuals. Her mother was Thandiswa Florence Makiwane,[6] founder of Zenzele Woman's Self-Improvement Association;[4] her father was the activist and author Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu, and her grandfather John Tengo Jabavu, editor of South Africa's first newspaper to be written in Xhosa. She was educated in England from the age of 13, under the guardianship of Margaret and Arthur Bevington Gillett (alongside Mohan Kumaramangalam and his sister Parvati Krishnan) and continued to live there for many years.[3][7] She studied first at The Mount School, York and later at London's Royal Academy of Music.[8][7] Before the Second World War she had become disinterested in the Royal Academy of Music and concentrated mostly on left-wing student politics.[7] In 1938 she was at a prom in the Queen’s Hall that was interrupted to be told of Neville Chamberlain's "peace for our time" settlement.[7] On the outbreak of the Second World War she gave up studies as a film technician and trained to become a semi-skilled engineer and oxyacetylene welder, working on bomber engine parts. After the war she remained in London, becoming a feature writer and television personality, working for the BBC as a presenter and as a producer. She paid extended visits to South Africa until her marriage to the English film director Michael Cadbury Crosfield broke South Africa's miscegenation laws and he could not accompany her because of the Immorality Act then in force. Thereafter she also travelled and lived in Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe.[8]

She 1955 she returned to South Africa for a three-month stay.[3] Her first book, Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts (1960), derives from that trip. In the Author's Note Jabavu writes:

I belong to two worlds with two loyalties: South Africa, where I was born, and England, where I was educated. When I received a cable sent by my father, I flew back to South Africa to be amongst my Bantu people, leaving my English husband behind in London. Later that year, he and I went to live in East Africa, to be near my only sister who had married out there. I've told here something of my own background and circumstances. This is a personal account of an individual African's experiences and impressions of the differences between East and South Africa in their contact with Westernization.

Drawn in Colour was reprinted five times with the first year of its publication.[6]

Jabavu's second book, The Ochre People: Scenes from a South African Life, published in 1963, was also a memoir, of which she said: "It is a personal account of an individual African's experiences and impressions of the differences between East and South Africans in their contact with Westernization." It too received acclaim, hailed by critics as “brilliant” and “fascinating”.[4]

During time spent in South Africa in 1976–77, researching a book about her father, Jabavu published a weekly column in the East London newspaper Daily Dispatch, under the editorship of Donald Woods.[4]

She was awarded a lifetime achievement award by former Arts and Culture Minister Dr Pallo Jordan, as well as a best literature award in the Eastern Cape by the then sports, art and culture minister Nosimo Balindlela.[4]

Noni Jabavu died at the age of 88 in June 2008 and was buried in East London.[9]

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ According to one obituary, "Most of the biographical sketches of Jabavu list her year of birth as 1919, but one book, Women Writing Africa: the Southern Region, gives it as 1920." "Noni Jabavu, Author of Drawn in Colour, Dies at 88", Books, Times Live, 19 June 2008.
  2. ↑ Victoria Boynton and Jo Malin (eds), Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography. 2. K – Z, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 20.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Helen Nontando (Noni) Jabavu", South African History Online.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Gcina Ntsaluba, "Call to restore Noni Jabavu legacy", Daily Dispatch, 31 January 2013.
  5. ↑ V. M. Sisi Maqagi, Biographical note, in Margaret J. Daymond and others, Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region, The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003, p. 271.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Makhosazana Xaba, "Noni Jabavu: a peripatetic writer ahead of her times", Tydskr. letterkd. vol. 46, no. 1, Pretoria, 2009.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Memoirs for Ian, Nancy Scott, 2005, unpublished
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Margaret Busby (ed.), Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present, London: Jonathan Cape, 1992; Vintage, 1993; p. 287.
  9. ↑ Victor Mecoamere, "Author Jabavu dies", Sowetan Live, 25 June 2008.

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