Harriet Ngubane

Harriet Ngubane (11 November 1929 – October 2007), formerly known as Harriet Sibisi, was a South African social anthropologist best known for her work on Zulu belief systems. Though educated in England, Ngubane spent the latter years of her career as a professor at the University of Cape Town. She represented the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in the National Assembly from 1994 to 2004.

Early life and education Ngubane was born on 11 November 1929 in rural Inchanga near Pietermaritzburg in the former Natal Province. She was the third eldest of six siblings, among them former cabinet minister Ben Ngubane. She was raised on a Roman Catholic mission but in a Zulu family.

After matriculating at St Francis College in Mariannhill, she earned a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Natal,

Ngubane's doctoral thesis was published as Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine (1977), an influential ethnographic study of conceptions of health and illness among the Nyuswa-Zulu. She served two terms, gaining re-election in 1999. and continued her academic research, which became increasingly political in the late 1990s.

She died in October 2007 after a lengthy illness.