motion” with integral diversities. If “motion” is integrally implied in the condition of the
postcolonial state, it is made more pronounced by the fact of the demands globalization
makes on the nation state.
For that matter, History is the Home Address becomes a preoccupation with the
implications of the constitutive “motion” and the migrancy that this motion generates. It
is more cogently so because, like any other state, South Africa is not impervious to the
intensity of external polities that impact on African nations. Needless to say, even after
the return of many from exile in the wake of apartheid, the intricacies and intrigues that
are found at the centre of neo-liberal capitalism, will continue to impact on the way South
African citizens perceive themselves in relation to the consciousness of “collective being-
in-the-world” (Comaroff 129). On another plane, however, the orientation and attitude of
internal governance in itself is a crucial variable in determining the progress or otherwise
that the nation makes. In other words, it is impossible to adopt a totalist criticism of
globalization by putting all the blame on the acceleration of western imperialism. To an
appreciative extent, therefore, the collaboration or complicity of the home government
remains crucial to how economic violence, among others, acts as a vector for migration.
Appropriately, then, History is the Home Address is a response to the intimate experience
of the post-apartheid South African state in an age of neo-liberal capitalism. But because
Serote also appears to have conflated “the ordinary” and partisan politics in the
articulation of this response, the tendency is to gloss over the currency of his response to
planetary politics; or submit that it is for the most part occluded by his involvement in
politics as a member of parliament. One such criticism is found in Ian Gilfillan’s review
of the poet’s relevance in the post-apartheid era with respect to how we may understand
History is the Home Address : “the Serote of the 70’s (sic), the passionate writer lyrically
pouring out the agonies of apartheid, has been replaced by a praise-poet for Thabo
Mbeki” (2004: 1). At another level of criticism, and as inscribed in the blurb, the
understanding is that the poem “examines the relationship between African identity and
ancestral guidance, and the impact of colonialism on that identity”.