Springs-born Gordimer dies at 90
“Nadine Gordimer could take a dull question and carry it to a wonderful place” – @jillian_dunham on Twitter in tribute to the legendary South African scribe.
Born in Springs in 1923, Nobel Prize winner and political activist, Nadine Gordimer died peacefully, on Sunday, at the age of 90 in her Johannesburg home.
The author who is as well known internationally for her sterling literary career as for her anti-apartheid politics was born in the city on November 20.
She was born in to immigrant parents – her father, watchmaker Isidore was from Latvia and her mother, Hannah (nee Myers) from Britian and was educated largely at home.
After a year at Wits, where she mixed with people from across the colour bar for the first time, she moved to Johannesburg in 1948 and became involved in the Sophiatown renaissance as well as continuing her writing career.
Activism
The arrest of her best friend, Bettie du Toit, in 1960 and the Sharpeville massacre is said to have spurred her entry into the anti-apartheid movement and she became an active member of the then banned ANC.
Thereafter, she quickly became active in South African politics, and was close friends with Nelson Mandela’s defense attorneys (Bram Fischer and George Bizos) during his 1962 trial.
Committed to fighting apartheid, she was a leading member of the party and fought for Mandela’s release.
During this time, she and Mandela, who would have celebrated his birthday on Friday, become firm friends and she edited Mandela’s famous I Am Prepared To Die speech, which he gave as a defendant during his 1962 trial.
When he was released from prison in 1990, Gordimer was one of the first people he wanted to see.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation paid tribute to Gordimer, saying it was “deeply saddened at the loss of South Africa’s grande dame of literature.
“We have lost a great writer, a patriot and strong voice for equality and democracy in the world,” it added.
In her later years, Gordimer became a vocal campaigner in the HIV/Aids movement, lobbying and fund-raising on behalf of the Treatment Action Campaign.
She was also critical of President Jacob Zuma, expressing her opposition to a proposed law which would limit the publication of information deemed sensitive by the government.
“The reintroduction of censorship is unthinkable when you think how people suffered to get rid of censorship in all its forms,” she said in a recent interview.
Writing
She began writing at an early age and published her first work – a short story for children, The Quest for Seen Gold – in 1937 at the age of 15.
The following year she had her first adult fiction published.
Her work included short stories and over 30 novels with the themes of the consequences of apartheid, exile and alienation resonating through many of them.
In 1951, her story A Watcher of the Dead was accepted for publication by the New Yorker, exposing her to an international audience for the first time.
Her first novel, The Lying Days was published in 1953 and takes place in Springs.
It has been said to be semi-autobiographical and tells the story of a young white woman, Helen’s, growing political awareness towards small-town life and racial division in South Africa.
A number of Gordimer’s books were banned by the South African government under the apartheid regime including The Late Bourgeois World (1966) and Burger’s Daughter (1979).
Her last novel, No Time Like the Present (2012), follows veterans of the battle against apartheid as they deal with the issues facing modern South Africa.
Awards
She won at least 25 different awards, both here and abroad.
Her first award was the W. H. Smith Commonwealth Literary Award , awarded in England in 1961.
Gordimer collected the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for A Guest of Honour in 1971
She won the Booker Prize in 1974 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
Alfred Nobel is widely quoted as saying of Gordimer that she was “recognized as a woman who through her magnificent epic writing has been of very great benefit to humanity.”
She was also awarded at least 15 honorary degree, with the first being a Doctor Honoris Causa from Leuven University in Belgium.
Among the myriad tributes to Gordimer, on Twitter , were the following:
- @Jay_Naidoo: Another giant South African passes. Nadine Gordimer showed courage in the past and present in speaking truth to power.Hamba Kahle comrade.
- @gussilber : RIP Nadine Gordimer, writer. Fierce of mind & sharp of pen, she hungered to make sense of life in South Africa.
- @feminist_rogue: RIP brave, generous, eccentric Nadine Gordimer. Thank you for the wealth of genius and courage over six decades.
- @NicholsUprising: Nadine Gordimer, brilliant writer, courageous foe of apartheid, exceptionally cool character, has died at 90.
