And They Didn’t Die

In her novel “And They Didn’t Die”, Lauretta Ngcobo gives us a glimpse of the life of a South African woman during the Apartheid Era (1950s-1980s). The human rights efforts of African women had a long lasting and far-reaching effect on the future cultural climate of South Africa. They fought back against the unjust laws that had permeated their country. Were they successful? What price did they pay? Ngcobo attempts to answer these …

…to keep their family unit together. Those in the cities protested against "Bantu" education, rent hikes, bus fare increases, forced removals of African communities, and government-owned beer halls that soaked up their husbands` wages. In the rural areas, women protested against the Government's "betterment" schemes, which included the mandatory culling of precious livestock, requiring women to fill and maintain cattle dipping tanks without pay, and soil conservation measures which dispossessed many families of arable land.