Morley Nkosi, who has just released his autobiography The Way Home
Oppressive conditions lead to various responses among those at the receiving end. For example, opposition to apartheid often led to prison and, not infrequently, a death sentence or extrajudicial execution.
Others opted for life in exile, taking flight to save their lives and to seek opportunities for self-actualisation and ways to contribute to freedom and democracy. Subsequently, trauma and related psychological effects became scars etched deeply in the psyche of many South Africans.
Like many others, what prompted author, academic and business person Morley Nkosi to flee his motherland was the dehumanising effects of apartheid on the majority population.
Unhealthy encounters with white bosses as a young man, plus being a victim of the invidious pass laws, led to his involvement in politics.
Under apartheid, opposition to unjust laws was flirting with imprisonment or death. It can, however, also be said without fear of contradiction or exaggeration that exile is a form of imprisonment.
Contrary to hearsay, exile life is challenging. In his song Mace and Grenades, recorded while in exile in the US, Hugh Masekela wailed, “I’m in jail out here, I’m in jail out there” — “here” meaning exile, “there” oppression in South Africa. Being in exile was like being in a South African prison.
A similar sentiment was expressed by author Alex La Guma when, decades ago, he bemoaned his alienation from the homeland from which he drew his creative juices.
Being in exile, especially for creative artists, was like being a fish out of water bereft of its life-sustaining, marine ecosystem.
Writer Es’kia Mphahlele was similarly driven by the alienation that exile induces. His return in 1977 was greeted by ferocious criticism from those who felt he had betrayed the cause by coming home before democracy was achieved.
‘I’m in jail’: Morley Nkosi, who has just released his autobiography The Way Home, and jazz legend Hugh Masekela (above) both went into exile during the apartheid era. Photo: Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
Many South African writers and artists, such as Nat Nakasa, Arthur Nortje, Ernest Cole, Dumile Feni and Gerard Sekoto, died destitute while in exile. Others, like Dulcie September and Ruth First, suffered extrajudicial execution, or were maimed, like Albie Sachs and Michael Lapsley.
Yet thousands more remain in exile having adapted to conditions in their host countries.
Fortunately, a good number of exiles have returned after having survived the vagaries of exile life and have off-loaded their trials and tribulations in varied ways.
Nkosi’s autobiographical The Way Home is a gripping account of the sojourn of one South African who, tired of the savagery of grand and petty apartheid and defiant of the degrading assaults on his dignity, humanity and psyche, decided to escape what could have been a dubious existence, fraught with uncertainty, if not death.
Nkosi’s account of life in exile takes the reader on a meticulously detailed, painful, but ultimately triumphant journey from his childhood years in Joburg to trekking through African countries, then onward to the UK, finally landing in the US. After studying and working there for 30 years, he returns home and is transformed in perceptible and imperceptible ways.
His country of birth had similarly been thrust into a metaphorical head spin. The apartheid system had been formally defeated but more mountains remained to be climbed, as Letta Mbulu warns in her song Not Yet Uhuru.
In this regard, it is worth remembering no achievement in life is a final, unalterable destination but a stepping stone to elevated satisfaction. All phenomena in nature are in a continuous state of change and growth.
Exile life was a lonely and exacting journey full of trials and tribulations. But it is also infused with lessons about possibilities that could not have been imagined under the stifling conditions of apartheid, if you were black.
Nkosi’s story captures, in good measure, the precarity of life in exile. Though it was unsettling, it was full of affirmations.
The racial inequality embedded in the apartheid system is a theme that lay at the foundation of his earlier book Black Workers, White Supervisors. In it, he describes the early “development of the dual, racially divided and hierarchical labour structure found in each of the industries studied” (agriculture, mining, and manufacturing).
He observes, “Contemporary wisdom says to understand the present, you need to go back and examine the past. This way, charting your future is better informed and assured.”
Pursuing his studies in the US and earning a PhD in economics, he continued his activism in the anti-apartheid struggle, including social justice campaigns. Teaching at Rutgers and Hofstra universities and the New School for Social Research provided Nkosi with a wealth of experience. This helped “chart” his future and that of his beleaguered homeland.
Many fascinating vignettes are on offer in The Way Home and other epiphanies expanded his life experience, as evidenced by his shift from his original political affiliation.
Having witnessed an act of brazen corruption by a trusted colleague, he joined the broad-church liberation movement, only to discover it was not immune to the virus from which he sought to flee.
Furthermore, he embarked, consciously or unconsciously, on a more profound introspection process, prompting a revelation of the contradictions inherent in religion.
Born into a deeply Christian family, with a father who was an ordained evangelist in the Dutch Reformed Church, which was racially segregated and Calvinist, he began to see the church as nothing more than a replication of the unequal, unfair social order in South Africa. It was part and parcel of colonial and apartheid projects, he surmised.
Like most exiles, Nkosi had an undying desire to return home, a yearning famously rendered by Masekela in his song Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela).
The Way Home adds a vital part of the literature on the lived experiences of formerly exiled South Africans. Yet, it is immensely valuable to those who also waged the struggle on the home front. It is a must-read for the old, young and, hopefully, those yet to be born.
The Way Home is published by the University of Johannesburg Press. Mokubung Nkomo is a retired academic who has authored and edited several books and published in numerous academic journals.