Sarah Eva Goldblatt (25 December 1889 – 22 May 1975) was a South African journalist, teacher, and literary editor of C.J. Langenhoven's writing. She is the first woman to have poems published in Afrikaans.
Biography
Early years
Goldblatt was born on 25 December 1889 in London as the eldest of four children to David Nathan Goldblatt and Fanny Esther Smith. Her parents were German-speaking Jews from Russian Poland, who had emigrated to England shortly before her birth. Sarah had two brothers, and a sister, Rebecca. Her father, who was born in Radom, was educated in a yeshiva, but had also received secular education in Berlin and Warsaw and was known as an outspoken socialist and Yiddishist. They arrived to South Africa in 1897.
Education
As a child, she already learned to speak German and English fluently. Her family emigrated to Cape Town in 1897, where she attended the St. Martini School on Queen Victoria Street, and helped her father's small printing business and bookstore in Cape Town. Through private tuition in Cape Dutch with Mr. CJ van Rhijn and self-study, she later obtained the school completion certificate (skooleindsertifikaat) and after that, she qualified to work as a primary school teacher at Cape Town Training College in 1911 when she received the T3 certificate for primary education.
Teaching career
She started to work as a teacher for a year at Cape Town Commercial College and in 1912, she began teaching at the Commercial Evening School in Oudtshoorn. When she found out there was a vacancy in the newspaper Het Zuid-Westen, which was edited by C.J. Langenhoven, which she obtained and joined the editorial staff in September 1912; they ran this newspaper together until the beginning of 1915. It is at this time that the very close friendship between them started to be forged. At the time of her appointment, she was not yet fully fluent in Afrikaans, but she learned the language and soon shared Langenhoven's passion for it. The collapse of the ostrich markets and the outbreak of the First World War hurt the newspaper business, and due to financial difficulties, it ceased operations at the beginning of 1915. Goldblatt went back to teach at the Commercial Evening School in Oudtshoorn and on Wynands River in the Oudtshoorn district, and on weekends she returned to do typing work for Langenhoven.
In January 1916, she began to work as a teacher at the farm school in Leeublad in the George district. In the middle of 1917, she returned to Cape Town and later settled in Mowbray in a house she called Luluerai. From October 1917 to May 1918, she was the first woman part of the editorial staff of the Afrikaans journal Die Burger. At the same time, she began to work as an editor for C.J. Langenhoven's manuscripts at Die Burger and National Press. Due to financial constraints, Die Burger had to cut staff in 1918 and she was laid off, although she received a letter of recommendation from the editor, Dr. Daniël François Malan. After her term at Die Burger, she was involved in the founding of the financial company Die Suid-Afrikaanse Nasionale Trust en Assuransie Maatskappij Beperk (South African National Trust and Assurance Company Limited), which is today known as Sanlam and continued to teach in Afrikaans at Simonstad Primary School and East Park Primary School, and then for three terms at Tokai Public School, which later became Simon van der Stel Primary School. She subsequently taught Afrikaans at Retreat and then from January 1922 at the Cape Town Training College. Later, she taught at Central Girls High School in Roeland Street in Cape Town.