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Lauretta Ngcobo (Née Gwina)

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Lauretta Ngcobo (Née Gwina) Lauretta Ngcobo (née Gwina). Inanda student, 1945-1949. Interviewed in Durban, 19 March 2009. To begin with, I’ve been asking people about their family backgrounds, so can you give me a little information about that, to start out? Mmm-hmm. I was born [in 1932] in the bottom part, in the southernmost part of KwaZulu- Natal, just on the border between the Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, and it’s a very rural area, the little town of Mzimkulu—in fact, I was born on the Ixopo side, which is equally rural, but I always think I was born in Mzimkulu because it was only four miles away, whereas Ixopo was thirteen miles away. So I grew up in a very rural area. So that’s where—this area, that’s one of the areas where the mining industry drew a lot of people to go and work on the mines, so I’ve got that experience of immigrants, immigration, people always going away, and women being on their own in the rural areas where I grew up. And that’s the kind of place I know. I think I will stop there, with that rural side. And your parents? I read that your mother had gone to Inanda Seminary, and your grandmother too. Yes—oh, my grandmother came from the Ndwedwe side, I think you are now familiar with the geography there, from the Ndwedwe side, and, em, near Umdloti River, and she married my grandfather, who also lived on the other side of the same river. My grandfather was one of the most adventurous young men perhaps of those times, because he left his big family homestead, and went to Cape Town to work, and to study. And when was that? Oh, this was—I think, judging by their age—my grandfather was much older than my grandmother—this must have been somewhere in the 1870s. Yes, that’s very adventurous for that time. Yes, it was, really. And that college, which is called Zonnebloem College today, in Cape Town, that’s where he went as a young man. And I’m not too sure of the actual level of education he reached, but for those times it was quite high. And at some point—he just had that spirit—at some time he decided to leave Cape Town and to go to Lovedale, and I think the aim was to further his studies, because there was nothing special about Lovedale except its educational system, which I think you know now was about the same time as Inanda and Adams and all those mission establishments, and he went there to further his studies, shall I call it— And what was his name? His name was Nyoni Cele, yes, my mother’s side was Cele, and he was—there is a possibility that he might have been called Nyoni Nyovane, because that name does appear, though it was never used by the family locally, but I think in his adventures he gave himself that name. And so there was no connection at the time, even though the two homesteads are just separated by a big river and a high hill. My grandmother’s family—I’ve been there recently, for the first time—is up on the hill, and my grandfather’s is down near the river below, but before he came back, my grandmother, together with a small group of other girls, decided to abscond from home and to go to Inanda to become Christian. 1 Lauretta Ngcobo (née Gwina). Inanda student, 1945-1949. Interviewed in Durban, 19 March 2009. Ah, so she was one of the runaways. She was. And what was her name? She was Agnes Cele. At the time—Mdladla. That was her name before she married? That was her maiden name. I’ll look for information about her in the records, I’m sure I’ll find something. I’ll let you know. I would be very, very pleased to know about that. She was a student at Inanda—I don’t think she went very high, but she did study the home industry and she learned to read and write, and she used to speak some English to us sometimes, which she had gathered from Inanda. And of course she always talked about Inanda Seminary. When her own daughters—at the time, when she moved—she went to Inanda and studied, and I don’t know why she decided to leave it, but when she came back from Inanda she was one of the few who were educated, who were familiar with white ways, shall I call them—and I think that’s what made the link more easy for my grandfather who had traveled so far for so many years. And fortunately for him she came from a very beautiful family, she was a very pretty woman. And then, by 1896, they got married. Let me show you their picture… Oh no, it’s at my other home in Ulundi. It’s not here. [She later gave me a copy.] Oh, shame. Somehow it flashed through my mind. I still have got the picture of them wearing those long Victorian dresses. But my grandfather even then does look much older. Anyway, they then settled at Inanda, near Ohlange, and the Dubes were neighbors, you know, and when they had their own children, right there at Ohlange, my mother in particular, they sent her to Inanda. So my mother studied at Inanda until she was ready to qualify for a teachers’ course, and from Inanda she was moved to Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg, a training institution of those times, where she trained as a teacher. So halfway through this period, they moved from Inanda to Mzimkulu. My grandfather, who I think had more money, more substantial money that he had saved, was one of the few men who were able to come together and cooperate in buying a place. There was a farm at Mzimkulu, and this Mr. Webb—I’m so sorry about the noise [construction is noisily underway in the flat above]—and so my grandfather, they moved to go and establish this new place. Just three or four weeks ago I took some American students and their professors to Mzimkulu, to that place, right to the school that was started by my grandfather. So when was this? Was this the 1910s, or earlier? Yes—to be exact, it was about 1913. 1913. Okay, so they purchased the farm in 1913, before the Natives Land Act? Yes, they purchased the land just before the new laws came in, that disallowed black people to own property. So my grandfather had already built that property, together with a group of ten men. So he had quite a decent farm at Mzimkulu, in a place called Webb’s Town. They had bought it from Mr. Webb. In Zulu we call it Cabazi. And so, that’s where I grew up. My father, 2 Lauretta Ngcobo (née Gwina). Inanda student, 1945-1949. Interviewed in Durban, 19 March 2009. when he met with my mother, my mother was already a teacher, and she was teaching in a village near Adams College. My father’s history is also rather complicated. Your father was Xhosa? Yes, my father came from the Cape, and he was the last born of a large family of eight, and his parents were dead, but his eldest brother brought him up. His eldest brother was an evangelist, and he wanted him to be educated too. So he took his youngest brother and went and trained him— there was a training college—not a teachers’ training college, but for the artisans, what do you call it—he took him to this school that was not very far from Adams College and that’s where my father studied. And do you remember the name of that school? They call it Endwaleni. That’s where he studied, he was good at carpentry. And at that point, unfortunately, because they used to travel long distances on horseback between the Cape and Endwaleni, on one occasion he was taking him back to school, and unfortunately it was wet, and there was no way of him getting warmer, or changing, he had to get right back to where he comes from, and unfortunately his brother caught pneumonia on that trip, and he died. So my father was left alone. You know, out of a family of eight, the only person he can account for was his sister, who got married and left home and was never seen again—the uncle’s wife moved off to her own people at Mpongweni—my father then found it very difficult to follow his brother’s wife, although the brother’s wife was fair enough, she wrote to tell him that though his brother had died he had left a lot of property, cattle, sheep, and goats, that is, and they are all yours, Simon, when you are ready—I have taken them to my people, when you are ready you can come back and claim them. But my father, at that time, being a young man, there has always been this pride of men not to follow the female side, you know, particularly seeing as she wasn’t a relative really, so instead of going back—he didn’t know what he was going to do—he decided he was going to use some of the furniture he had made at school, sell it, and go to Adams, to teach and to train as a teacher.
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