Emma is an Afrikaans writer, journalist, and activist born in Holland. At the age of five her family moved to South Africa where she learned Afrikaans. She was later a reporter for Crisis News.

Her efforts against apartheid were complicated by her being white, Afrikaans, and lesbian. This is dealt with in her premier work Berigte van weerstand (Reports of resistance). After that she wrote a few novels, but tended to do better in non-fiction.

Her work is often deemed angry and frustrated with the difficulties of post-apartheid South Africa. In 1990 she settled back to Holland.