KAKAZA, LILLITH

Lillith Kakaza (circa 1885-1950) was the first Xhosa woman writer. She, with other authors, helped to develop Xhosa fiction in the second decade of the 20th century.

She published two short stories. The first was a 31-page novelette, Intyatyambo yomzi (“The Flower in the Home”), which was published at Geuwa, in the Cape Province, in 1913. The second was a short novel of 71 pages, UTandiwe wakwa Gcaleka (“Tandiwe, a Maid of Gcaleka”), which was published by the Methodist Book Room in Cape Town in 1914. Neither of her works had been translated into English by the mid-1980s. At some time between the publication of UTwandiwe and 1926, she married V. Kwatsha, taking his name.

She was associated with a school of Xhosa novelists who introduced realism into their work. Among her contemporaries were Henry Masila Ndawo, Enoch S. Guma and Guybon B. Sinxo. Together, they drew on English 19th-century novels to create the pattern of the urban novel, which has become a standard feature of South African fiction.

LEONARD LESILIE BESSANT