Memoirs of a Born-Free: Reflections on the New South Africa by a Member of the Post-Apartheid Generation

Blogger, columnist, and activist wa Azania was 23 years old when she wrote this account of growing up as a “born-free”—a member of the generation born after the end of apartheid in South Africa. She was disillusioned by the hardships young black people still face (for example, the “black tax”: the need for her age cohort, the first in their families with some economic mobility, to financially support multiple generations) and by the ruling African National Congress’s failure to live up to the ideals it espoused as a resistance movement. It is to the ANC that she addresses her story, which, she explains, is “about realising that liberators can and often do become oppressors.” In the first section, she recalls growing up in a Soweto township, illustrating through her family’s experiences what it is like to live in a society nominally no longer segregated but far from equal. She points out, for example, the institutional racism on display in the choice to teach using English and Afrikaans in elementary schools, but to offer indigenous languages only as an elective for high school students. In the second section, she recalls her entrance into activismwith groups like Blackwash and Economic Freedom Fighters. Unsurprisingly, given her youth and the movement’s in-progress status, the narrative is written with little distance from the events described. This is less a traditional memoir than an often poignant real-time document of South African life. (July)