[12] Her maternal aunt was Cecilia Makiwane, the first African registered professional nurse in South Africa and an early activist in the struggle for women's rights.

From the age of 13, Noni was educated in England, under the guardianship of Margaret and Arthur Bevington Gillett (alongside Mohan Kumaramangalam and his sister Parvati Krishnan), and she would continue to live there for many years.

[4] She later recalled: "Like a typical black child of those days, at 13 I was not too well primed about the negotiations that must have gone on between my parents and my prospective loco-parents, about the life they were planning for me which I was to learn in years to come, was to be a practical demonstration of the generations of friendship between families.

This is a personal account of an individual African's experiences and impressions of the differences between East and South Africa in their contact with Westernization.Drawn in Colour was well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic.

The author, who is married to a British film director, tells of a voyage home to South Africa for the funeral of her brother who had been murdered by a gangster in Jo'burg, and of her vain attempts to save the marriage of her sister to a man in Uganda.

[19] She also did editorial work for The New Strand (the revived version of a century-old monthly renowned for publishing Conan Doyle), before being selected as its editor,[20][17] a choice its proprietor Ernest Kay explained by saying: "Miss Jabavu has led such a varied life that she will bring a completely fresh outlook to the magazine.

[16] (A review she would write two decades later of V. S. Naipaul's travelogue The Middle Passage reveals her discomfort during this Caribbean sojourn: "...I was disturbed, dismayed to find myself haunted by an inability to enjoy living in this reputedly most beautiful of enchanting islands.

[6] The review in Ebony magazine noted: "Exploring the rich culture and traditions of her South African Bantu background, the author illustrated the stresses that occur when old ways must be adapted to the solution of new problems.

"[25] During time spent in South Africa in 1976–77, researching a book about her father, Jabavu published a weekly column in the East London (Eastern Cape) newspaper Daily Dispatch, under the editorship of Donald Woods.

[6] Noni Jabavu died at the age of 88 in June 2008, at Lynette Elliott Frail Care Home,[1] and was buried in East London, South Africa.

[26] Jabavu's family was reportedly in the process of making a documentary film about her life, started by Duma kaNdlovu (creator of the television show Muvhango), when funds provided by the Eastern Cape Arts Culture Council ran out.

[31] The book Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home, a collection of her Daily Dispatch columns compiled and introduced by Makhosazana Xaba and Athambile Masola, was published in 2023.