Элса Жубер: Өмірі мен шығармашылығы

South African writer

Elsabé Antoinette Murray Joubert OIS (19 October 1922 – 14 June 2020) was a Sestigers Afrikaans language writer. She rose to prominence with her novel Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena), which was translated into 13 languages, as well as staged as a drama and filmed as Poppie Nongena.

Elsa Joubert was born and raised in the Cape settlement of Paarl and matriculated from the all girls school La Rochelle in Paarl in 1939. She then studied at the University of Stellenbosch from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1942 and an SED (Secondary Education Diploma) in 1943. She continued her studies at the University of Cape Town which she left with a Master's degree in Dutch Afrikaans literature in 1945. After graduating, Joubert taught at the Hoër Meisieskool, an all girls high school in Cradock, then worked as the editor of the women's pages of Huisgenoot, a well known Afrikaans family magazine, from 1946 to 1948. She then started writing full time and travelled extensively in Africa, from the springs of the Nile in Uganda, through the Sudan, to Cairo, as well as to Mozambique, Mauritius, Réunion, Madagascar, and Angola. She also visited Indonesia. In 1950, Joubert married Klaas Steytler, a journalist and later publisher and author, who died in 1998. She had three children, two daughters and one son, and lived in Oranjezicht, Cape Town. She died in Cape Town on 14 June 2020 due to COVID 19 related causes during the COVID 19 pandemic in South Africa. In May 2020, during the pandemic, she wrote an open letter to relax restrictions and allow home care residents to see family. “We are in the last months and weeks of our lives,” she wrote, “and we who live in homes or institutions, however wonderful, are totally cut off from our family members.”