Lauretta Ngcobo Biography

South African novelist, born in Ixopo, Natal, educated at Fort Hare University. Forced into exile as a member of the banned Pan-African Congress, she arrived in Britain in 1970 and began working as a teacher in London. Cross of Gold (1981), her first novel, drew on her memories of the violent turbulence in South Africa from the 1950s onward; her difficulties in writing about the political experience of black South African women led her to feature a male activist as the book's central protagonist. And They Didn't Die (1990) succeeds in giving centrality to female characters, dramatically evoking the efforts of Jezile, a black domestic maid, to free herself from both white racism and the constraints of her people's traditional culture. Ngcobo is the editor of Let It Be Told (1987), a collection of essays by black women writers living in Britain, and the children's book Fiki Learns to Like Other People (1993).