ALWAYS ANOTHER COUNTRY

Review on Sisonke Msimang’s Always Another Country

A deeply personal and introspective memoir of life lived across boarders. Sisonke Msimang’s, Always Another Country speaks of a new generation of black South Africans; Those who “all knew those freedom songs, and could speak five African languages and the Queens English...and understand what its like to belong to a movement that is also a family”. But more specifically, she persistently addresses the sudden emergence of blacks who are unapologetic and sum-what accustomed to privilege. Sonke considers herself to be born amongst this new category of the “elite” and grapples to come to terms with what this might mean in post-apartheid South Africa. Being a child of exile Sonke and her three sisters all hear of but never quite experience the tyranny of apartheid, but being the children of a freedom fighter, they “cradle imaginary AK-47s in their skinny cadres. When they skip rope, they call out the names of their heroes to a staccato beat punctuated by their jumps: ‘Govan Mbeki, ‘hop, skip, ‘walkter Sis-ulu,‘skip, hop:

‘One!’ Jump.

‘Day!’ Jump.

‘We!’ Jump.

‘Will!’ Jump.

‘All!’ Jump.

‘Be!’ Jump.

‘Freeeeee!’“

This is the note from which the memoir begins. the Msimang’s begin their story as refugee’s in the newly independent Zambia, close to the centre of Lusaka; Where Sisonke remarks on “the new generation of urban Africans who were not concerned with what whites thought of them.” She anchors her confidence from this standpoint, carrying herself “like a child who has every reason to believe she was the center of the universe.” But it is the abrupt shift from being refugee’s in Zambia, the head quarters of the ANC, to expatriates in Kenya, Nairobi where their “guerrilla” father, Mavuso Msimang lands a job with the UN having little to do with the revolution, which suddenly affords them a number of possibilities. Sisonke laments on the privilege which distanced her from the poor and at times the revolution itself, but advocates, through her expression, that its important for people to be able to “claimed authority based on the fact that they are South African citizens who have the rights to comment or criticize simply because they are South African.” Sisonke’s lack of involvement in the revolution or her time spent abroad does and should not exclude her from any current discussion that involves South Africa or South Africans, and the bravery of her memoir makes it so.

Although perhaps it is the more personal aspects of the book which held my interest. From the honest retelling of neglect and sexual abuse, to the emotional trauma resulting from a sustained relationship with the bipolar, “Unemployed and unemployable” Jason. Sisonke manages to briefly capture the more vulnerable aspects of her persona. But sadly, she does not manage to sustain this and instead drags us through a rather shallow summary of the socio-political transitions of an independent South Africa. She simultaneously fails to detail the complexity of her internal struggle with dating and eventually marrying a white man, which conflicted with the radical ideals she’d adopted in collage. Though to her defense Sisonke’s first and long awaited arrival in South Africa is marked with an acute observation of Jan Smut Airport, which is “bathed in a dirty fluorescent light, the kind that makes even perfect skin look pitted.” This distinct ascetic repression in the remaining structures from apartheid South Africa can still be felt today, with “the low ceilings...and too much brown brick. The airport is a fascist fortress, designed to withstand attack.” Here lies an example of a particular gift of expression which resonates throughout the memoir and makes it a delight to read. But perhaps the most earnest and saddening confession is Sisonke’s slow and unwilling disillusionment with the ANC. From the sudden and unexpected forgiveness of Nelson Mandela, to the HIV & Aids denial-ism which, to her view, stained Thabo Mbeki’s presidency. Sisonke, initially considering the party “to be in her blood” now sees “the claim of being a child of the ANC as one that is bursting with privilege...a profound form of entitlement...” and finds herself “guilty of the very cronyism she abhor’s in the leadership of the ANC.”

The final chapters of Sisonke Msinang’s , Always Another Country summarizes what might be the true intention of her memoir; an ode to her late mild mannered and pragmatic mother, Ntombi Msimang, from whom she is “suddenly un-mothered” but leaves us with the lesson that “it was having a map, rather than belonging to a country, that would make us free, that it was those we loved, and not where we lived, that would make us belong, and that it was open hearts, rather than closed fists, that would help us navigate the world.”

Written by Lethokuhle Msimang