Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation

Memoirs of a Born Free

Memoirs of a Born Free is a journey back through the life of Malaika Wa Azania as she recounts the experience of growing up through the end of apartheid and South Africa’s transition into a democratic nation. She was not born during the times of constitutionalised apartheid but is still a product of an epoch of systematic individualised apartheid. Her story is not a reflection of freedom; it is an epitome of the on-going struggle for liberation and emancipation from mental

slavery.

The struggle of the generations before that of the Born Frees was a struggle for political freedom and democracy and was the foundation for revolution and reform but not the ultimate goal. Malaika contests the notion of the born-free generation when it is a generation that was born in the midst of a struggle for economic freedom and the quest for the realisation of the objectives of the African Renaissance.

Now 22 years into a democratic dispensation, Malaika describes her life as having been a struggle to understand the “rainbow nation” and to salvage from it something that renders her free. She did not find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that she was told about as a child. She has, however, through the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, found reason to believe in the capacity of the people to escape the nervous conditions that define Black life. She continues to serve the African Youth Coalition with dedication as believes today, without a shadow of doubt, that another Africa is possible.