Famous South African novelist and activist dies at 84

One of Africa's best novelist and essayist Lauretta Ngcobo passed away in Johannesburg yesterday.

University of KwaZulu-Natal press, which published her books Prodigal Daughters and And They Didn’t Die, said in a statement: “We learnt [yesterday] of Lauretta Ngcobo’s death. Although she has struggled with her health ever since suffering a stroke, the news still came as a shock.”

Born in 1931 in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Ngcobo was at the forefront of the women’s anti-pass marches in the1950s and 1960s. She was well-known for her feminist stance against both apartheid and Zulu traditions that limited women’s freedom and reinforced their oppression under apartheid.

She went into exile in 1963, with her husband, the Pan Africanist Congress founder Abednego Bhekabantu Ngcobo, and settled in England. She had her first novel published in 1981, Cross of Gold. Ngcobo returned to South Africa in 1994.

In Prodigal Daughters: Stories of Women in Exile, edited by Ngcobo and published by UKZN Press in 2012, she recounts and reflects upon her life in exile.

Her other published works include Cross of Gold (1981), Let it be Told: Black Women Writers in Britain (1987), And They Didn’t Die (1990/1999) and Fiki Learns to Like Other People (1994).

In 2006 she received a Lifetime Achievement Literary Award from the South African Literary Awards. She was also given an award for her achievement in the field of literature and for her literary work championing gender equality.

Tributes were paid to Ngcobo by eThekwini Living Legend, in a statement the Centre said: “We wish to salute the recently departed Lauretta Ngcobo, a prolific writer, stalwart of the struggle for liberation and an unwavering voice for the empowerment of women in Africa and beyond.”

RELATED: Jackie Collins dies of breast cancer at 77