Memoirs Of A Born-free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation

(Paperback)

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Apartheid isn't over, so Malaika Wa Azania boldly argues in Memoirs Of A Born Free, her account of growing up black in modern-day South Africa. Malaika has experienced what she calls 'institutionalized racism,' apartheid's legacy in the so-called Rainbow Nation. Recounting her upbringing in a black township racked by poverty and disease, the death of a beloved uncle at the hands of white police and her alienation at multiracial schools, she evokes a country still held in thrall by de facto apartheid. An important new voice in South African activism.

Reviews

A profound commentary on South Africas twenty years of democracy. TheSunday Times(South Africa)

By forcefully interrogating the problematic notion of the Rainbow Nation, and by daring to address the broken promise of an ANC in dire need of strong leadership,Memoirs of a Born Freeis a must reada book that reveals just how inadequate political freedom without socio-economic freedom truly is. Independent Online (South Africa)

In a South Africa that had already declared itself to be post-apartheid, the image of racial integration and progress put forward by the current government is torn apart by the current generation. Living within structures still ravaged by institutional disparity, the image of the 'rainbow nation' is belied by the lived experienced dutifully expounded in this first long-form work by an activist voice of contemporary change for black consciousness. World Literature Today

Author Bio

MALAIKA WA AZANIA, real name Malaika Lesego Samora Mahlatsi, was born in Meadowlands, Soweto, in 1991, before moving to Dobsonville Extension 2 in her late teens. She is the former branch secretary of the South African Students Congress at Rhodes University, where she is currently pursuing a masters degree in geography after obtaining her honors degree cum laude. Malaika is the former secretary general of the African Youth Coalition, an umbrella body of youth civil society organizations established in 2013 by the Thabo Mbeki Foundation. She is the former African Union African Youth Charter ambassador for the Southern African Development Community region and the executive director of her own writing and transcribing company, Pen and Azanian Revolution (Pty) Ltd. In 2012, she founded a pan-Africanist journal, Afrikan Voices of the Left, dedicated to the memory of Pan Africanist Congress founding president Robert Sobukwe. Malaika is a published essayist, a blogger, a former television co-host, and a columnist. She previously wrote forThought Leader, theSundayIndependent, and the African Independent, and was a contributing writer to theThinkermagazine. Voted as one of the Mail & Guardians Top 200 Young South Africans, Malaika is a committed social justice activist and public intellectual. She is currently based in Pretoria and works for the South African government.

SIMPHIWEDANAis a Xhosa singer and songwriter whose distinctive style fuses jazz, Afro-soul, and traditional music. Called the best thing to happen to Afro-Soul music since Miriam Makeba by South African media, she is also a prominent activist and thefirst African ambassador for Amnesty International.