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SA literary icon, Zoë Wicomb passes away at 77 Janine2 Tue, 10/14/2025 - 17:53 Zoë Wicomb Zoë Wicomb CAPE TOWN - The University of the Western Cape (UWC) announced the passing of author, translator, and educator Zoë Wicomb (77) on Tuesday.Professor Fiona Moolla, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Humanities shared a moving tribute, where Wicomb is described as one of the most significant authors of late-apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. She is the most accomplished and celebrated novelist and short-story writer ever to have been a student at our university. Wicomb, was born in Namaqualand in 1948.Her acclaimed short story collection You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town is a semi-autobiographical account of her early university years. She also wrote the novels David’s Story (2000), Playing in the Light (2006), October (2014), and Still Life (2023). Her novels have received multiple awards, including the Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize awarded by Yale University in 2013. Professor Robert Balfour, UWC’s Vice-Chancellor, expressed his profound sadness at the news of her passing: I had the opportunity to meet with Zoe who visited for a Time of the Writer Festival in the early 2000s, and then kept in touch by visiting her and her partner in Glasgow. Her lively interest in South Africa and her deep concern with equality, inclusion and diversity, featured with such nuance, skill and wit in her writing and conversation, and remain powerful in memory. UWC extended condolences to Wicomb s family, friends, colleagues, and the broader literary community.

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