Witwatersrand University

She had begun by being taught by bun-faced nuns at a convent school, and she later attended Witwatersrand University for a year.

Her mother, Ruth First , journalist and anti-apartheid activist, was the daughter of two life-long communists, who were also Jewish peasant immigrants to South Africa from the Baltic states. She was born into...

Durng her time at the University of Witwatersrand she built links with some important Black writers, like Es'kia Mphahalele and Lewis Nkosi .

She also became a popular subject for interviewing by journalists. After her first, hesitant contact with the academic world, she became an adept at campus visits. Though always feeling to some extent an outsider...

After an unhappy experience with the Witwatersrand University in 1983, BH named as her literary executor Jane Bryce , a former student of her friend Jane Grant.