“What Is a Place?”: Exploring Place and Displacement in Lauretta Ngcobo’s Novel Cross of Gold

ABSTRACT Very little has been written about Lauretta Ngcobo’s first novel, Cross of Gold. Ngcobo uses a historical moment in Cross of Gold where the novel follows the lives of those affected by the Sharpeville Massacre. Central in the novel is the displacement of Black people during apartheid as a result of the pass laws as well as the oppressive apartheid laws that forced Black people to leave their homes. The novel brings into question the representation of place as there are various spatial representations such as exile, home, imprisonment and rural and urban spaces. This paper will explore how Ngcobo uses place to write about the Black experience during apartheid South Africa. The use of place as a motif in the novel raises questions about the subjectivity and identity of the characters.