Noni Jabavu was the first black South African woman to publish memoirs and one of the first African women to pursue a literary career abroad. She left the country as a teenager to pursue an education and returned intermittently throughout her life. She returned to South Africa in 1977 to research her father’s biography. Some of her best known work became the witty, insightful and politically charged columns she wrote for the Daily Dispatch newspaper. But this pioneering figure had been all but forgotten until writer and academic Makhosazana Xaba and historian Athambile Masola focused their attention on her life and work. Now they have released a book of Jabavu’s columns, called Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home. We asked Masola about the writer.
