(Author
Lauretta Ngcobo is presented with her award by Sibusiso Sithole, City Manager
at Ethekwini Municipality)
With its prestigious Living Legends Awards,
now in their fifth year, the eThekwini Municipality last month celebrated those
who have made a major contribution to the city in their various fields.
“The fact that what began as an idea in the
unassuming minds of a few people has grown in such leaps and bounds in a space
of five years is an extraordinary stride for our beautiful City,” said Councillor
James Nxumalo, the Mayor of eThekwini. “It is this power of an idea which is so
aptly personified by the people whose works, contributions and sacrifices the
eThekwini Living Legends Awards recognise and celebrate.”
This year’s impressive ceremony saw the
2012 recipients of the Living Legends Awards enter the splendidly-decorated ICC
carrying a lantern on one side and holding the hand of a five-year old child on
the other. The children were chosen specifically for their age to celebrate the
fifth anniversary of the awards.
The procession moved towards the stage and,
once each Living Legend awardee reached the stage, they symbolically handed their
lantern to their accompanying child. In an extremely moving process, the child
then walked up onto the stage, as if carrying forward the awardee’s energies
and skills into the future.
Among the awardees was author Lauretta
Ngcobo. A South African novelist, she was born and raised in the rural
community of Ixopo and educated at Fort Hare University. She is well known as a
feminist writer since the early 1950’s although her work was only published in
the 80s and 90s. She was an inspirational speaker during the 1956 women’s
anti-pass march that was held across the country, when it was chanted “When You
Strike The Women, You Strike a Rock”.
In 1963, Ngcobo was forced to flee South
Africa, escaping imminent arrest, and went into exile with her husband and
children. She moved from Swaziland to Zambia, and finally settled in England
where she worked as a teacher for 25 years. One of her many books, And They Didn’t Die, has been described
as “the most enlightened and balanced book” about the history and personal
anguish of the African woman. In 1994 she returned to South Africa after 31
years in exile.
Ngcobo was the winner of the Literary
Lifetime Achievement Award from the South African Department of Arts and
Culture in 2006 and the winner of the 2008 Order of Ikhamanga for The
Presidency of South Africa for excellent achievement in the field of
literature. Lauretta Ngcobo has shone a torch on the plight of women in Africa,
giving voice and visibility to their struggles for many generations to come.
Other 2012 Living Legends in the arts were
jazz musician Theo Bophela, visual artist Paul Sibisi and theatre personality and
artSMart editor Caroline Smart, who is currently reading Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die for Tape Aids for the
Blind.
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