The change in South Africa was very slow, hardly perceptible at first, only a rumble in the distance. They had succeeded in silencing almost every voice in effective opposition inside the country. Where, in the past, they had succeeded in putting fear into the black masses through harsh measures, they observed a growing defiance. This had an unnerving effect on personnel in the various agencies of government. It led to a growing number of desperate actions intended to stamp out the tide of insubordination. The number of arrests and banning orders grew each day; torture of political prisoners became the norm and people died under interrogation at the hands of the police. Any kind of protest was an open invitation to the police to shoot indiscriminately. The pattern became clearly identified with South Africa inside and outside the country.

Cross of Gold is an expansive, heartrending, anger-inducing portrayal of Black life in South Africa after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. Through the experiences of a range of characters, chiefly Mandla Zikode and his mother, Sindisiwe, the novel portrays the Sharpeville massacre and its brutal aftermath, the hardship of exile, and the brutal impact of the apartheid regime on Black lives and personhood. It depicts apartheid’s legion of crimes against humanity including incarceration, the dehumanising labour farms where Black men were practically enslaved and often beaten to death, infant mortality due to malnutrition, and the grievous impact of the Pass Laws and land dispossession on Black life.

Ngcobo chillingly animates what she calls in the novel ‘The Black Cross;’ life under the perpetual brutality of apartheid, which dehumanised, brutalised, maimed and murdered with impunity. Originally publishing the novel in 1981, Ngcobo, a mother of four and wife, was placed on the literary world stage. Though it was banned in South Africa and never circulated here, it opened for the writer new worlds of travel, invited lectures, conferencing, media interviews and kinship with other African writers.

This reprint aims to give a voice to those previously silenced under the apartheid laws, it brings into question the representation of place as there are various spatial representations such as exile, home, imprisonment, and rural and urban spaces.