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 Gordimer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1991, died at her Johannesburg home on Sunday evening in the
presence of her children, Hugo and Oriane, a statement from the
family said.
"She cared most deeply about South Africa, its culture, its
people and its ongoing struggle to realize its new democracy."
Regarded by many as South Africa's leading writer, Gordimer
published novels and short stories steeped in the drama of human
life and emotion of a society warped by decades of
white-minority rule.
Many of her stories dealt with the themes of love, hate and
friendship under the pressures of the racially segregated system
that ended in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became South Africa's
first black president.
A member of Mandela's African National Congress (ANC), which was
banned under apartheid, Gordimer used her pen to battle against
the inequality of white rule for decades, earning her the enmity
of sections of the establishment.
Some of her novels, such as “"A World of Strangers" and
"“Burger's Daughter", were banned by the apartheid authorities.
But Gordimer, a petite figure with a crystal-clear gaze, did not
restrict her writing to a damning indictment of apartheid. She
cut through the web of human hypocrisy and deceit wherever she
found it.
"“I cannot simply damn apartheid when there is human injustice
to be found everywhere else," she told Reuters shortly before
winning her Nobel prize.
In later years, she became a vocal campaigner in the HIV/AIDS
movement, lobbying and fund-raising on behalf of the Treatment
Action Campaign, a group pushing for the South African
government to provide free, life-saving drugs to sufferers.
Nor did she shy away from criticising the ANC under current
President Jacob Zuma, expressing her opposition to a proposed
law which limits the publication of information deemed sensitive
by the government.
"The reintroduction of censorship is unthinkable when you think
how people suffered to get rid of censorship in all its forms,"
she said last month.
The ANC responded to her death by describing Gordimer as an
"unmatched literary giant whose life's work was our mirror and
an unending quest for humanity".
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"WHITE AFRICAN"
The daughter of a Lithuanian Jewish watchmaker, Gordimer started
writing in earnest at the age of nine.
A lonely childhood triggered an intense study of the ordinary people
around her, especially the customers in her father's jewellery shop
and the migrant black workers in her native East Rand outside
Johannesburg.
A teenage naivety was eventually replaced by a sense of rebellion
and as her talent and reading public grew, her liberal leanings
earned her the reputation of a radical.
Eventually the government censors clamped down and banned three of
her works in the 1960s and 1970s, despite her growing prestige
abroad and her acceptance as one of the foremost authors in the
English language.
The first book to be banned was “"A World of Strangers", the story
of an apolitical Briton drifting into friendships with black South
Africans and uncovering the schizophrenia of living in segregated
Johannesburg in the 1950s.
In 1979, "“Burger's Daughter" was banished from the shelves for its
portrayal of a woman's attempt to establish her own identity after
her father's death in jail makes him a political hero.
Despite Gordimer's place in the international elite, she maintained
a passionate concern for those struggling at the bottom of South
Africa's literary heap.
“"It humbles me to see someone sitting in the corner of a township
shack he shares with 10 others, trying to write in the most
impossible of conditions," she said.
Gordimer also remained proud of her heritage despite her hatred of
apartheid and only once considered emigrating - to nearby Zambia.
“"Then I discovered the truth, which was that in Zambia I was
regarded by black friends as a European, a stranger," she said. "It
is only here that I can be what I am: a white African."
(The story is refiled to remove extraneous word in paragraph 7.)
(Reporting by Ndundu Sithole; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by
Pascal Fletcher/Mark Heinrich)
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