She grew up in Gugulethu, a Cape Town township, and worked as a domestic while completing her secondary education by correspondence.

[2] In the 2013 animated adventure comedy film Khumba she was the voice actor for the character Gemsbok Healer.

[4] Magona published two autobiographies: To My Children's Children and Forced To Grow; two collections of short stories: Living Loving and Lying Awake at Night and Push-Push and Other Stories; and four novels: Mother to Mother, Beauty's Gift, Life is a Hard but Beautiful Thing, and Chasing Tails of My Father's Cattle!

Her novel Beauty's Gift was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book, Africa Region.

Compilation: You Pay For The View – Maskew Miller Longman (2009) With the Gugulethu Writers' Group she created Umthi ngamnye unentlaka yawo – short stories (Xhosa Realities, 2007); UNobanzi (Oxford University Press, 2010); UNyana weSizwe 2009 and 2010; and a series of 24 books (Igugu), from her workshop with students at the University of the Western Cape (David Philip Publishers, 2015).