PROFESSOR ZOË CHARLOTTE WICOMB

Honorary Doctorate RECIPIENT 2021

PROFESSOR ZOË CHARLOTTE WICOMB

DOCTOR PHILOSOPHIAE

Zoë Wicomb is one of the most signifi cant authors of late-apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, and one of the country’s most accomplished writers.

Wicomb left South Africa for the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. Other than a brief period in South Africa in the 1990s when she taught at UWC and regular visits, she has lived abroad. She taught at the University of Strathclyde until retiring as Professor Emerita. Wicomb received the prestigious Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize from Yale University in the prize’s inaugural year in 2013.

Wicomb’s creative oeuvre includes the 1987 linked-story collection, You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, the novels David’s Story (2000), Playing in the Light (2006), October (2014) and Still Life, and numerous short stories.

Wicomb has been a chronicler of the eff ects of the apartheid regime on South Africa’s social and cultural life, and has unstintingly critiqued the dangers of the hegemonic discourses of a new post-apartheid nationalism. Her work speaks bravely and honestly to South Africa’s present. It is a testament to the place that formed her, and it is fi t and proper that UWC accords her its highest honour.