Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang

Author:Sisonke Msimang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Always Another Country, Sisonke Msimang, Exile, Canada, Kenya, Jonathan Ball, Non-fiction, Memoir
ISBN: 9781868428496
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Published: 2017-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

The fire before freedom

In 1993, Mummy and Baba move back to South Africa. They are based in Natal, in the economic hub of Durban. Like many of the other exiles, they head to the cities closest to where they left, where family is. Within a few short years, they will move again – following the money and the elite opportunities available in Pretoria and Johannesburg. In 1993, though, everyone is scattered across Port Elizabeth and Umtata and Durban and Cape Town.

In the early 1990s, there are murders every week in Natal. The IFP and the ANC are involved in a proxy war. It is evident that, although De Klerk professes to be on a path to peace and a negotiated settlement, there is a dirty-tricks campaign designed to derail the process. It seems the news is never good. Mandela is beginning to look old and his comrade and lifelong friend, Walter Sisulu, is too.

Still, there are others who can lead us. Among them is Chris Hani. He is fiery and radical and all the things that the white people fear. He is immensely popular.

Mummy and Hani’s wife Limpho studied together at school in Lusaka, and Baba knows Hani from his MK days, and so whenever I read his name I automatically put ‘Uncle’ in front of it. Baba and Uncle Chris were together in the camps. Where Baba and Mummy chose us over the revolution, the Hanis chose the struggle. They paid a very heavy price for their commitment. Like us, they moved from country to country. But unlike us, their father was a specific target – one of the highest-priority targets of the apartheid regime. They understood mortal danger in a way my sisters and I had never had to imagine.

Uncle Chris has this incredible capacity to both stir the pot and calm emotions. He is deeply suspicious of white South Africans, yet he is totally committed to the notion of non-racialism. He is the first person I come across who can articulate this so precisely without looking hypocritical. Chris Hani has survived assassination attempt after assassination attempt. He has every reason to mistrust the white minority regime. Yet he has also waged long and hard battles within and outside the ANC – to make the party fairer, to make justice part of the core values of the communist party of which he is the leader. His Marxist analysis makes it impossible for him to privilege race over class. So he doesn’t – he refuses to make a false choice, but he does not use this as a crutch. He does not hide behind nice words about whites simply because some of his comrades in the ANC and SACP are white.

Uncle Chris is a key voice in calling for cautious optimism. He is not convinced that the whites are ready to relinquish power but he is convinced the path of negotiations is important for the moment.

By the winter of 1993, there is talk about who will succeed Mandela. But we do not have freedom yet.

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