To appeal to Zeleza (2003:8) once more, progressive African intellectuals often express
anxiety and reservations over globalization because of its practices which tend to subject
Africa to conditions of marginalization redolent of the previous phases of Western
capitalist imperialism. Ironically, this fact of marginality, often expressed in terms of the
North-South dichotomy, has also brought with it the “migration of African intellectuals to
the North [as] part of the complex processes of globalization, a process that offers both
opportunities and dangers” (401). But this is where the discussion differs with Zeleza
because, the truth of the matter is that the vulnerability to the North via migration and
other forms of dispersal dynamics is not limited to African intellectuals. As I have argued
in the introduction, the experiences that intellectuals relate concerning exile and diaspora
are not necessarily confined to their intimate encounters, but should be more
appropriately conceived as possessing a vicarious import and ramifying all cadres of
African humanity. If this is thus Africa’s experience, then South Africa is not excluded
despite the respite it seems to have experienced from exile since the institution of non-
segregatory governance. The threat of migrancy that Africa confronts in the face of
globalization also becomes the threat that South Africa faces. But in responding to this,
Serote begins first with the location of history in regard to time and space of the past in
order to confront the present and the future.
This understanding comes to the fore in the first part of the poem which situates time and
space within the cosmological coalescence in order to bring history to focus. The location
of these variables aligns with the affirmation of the specificity of home in the
transformation of the nation. The instantiation of the reflection on time and space as
history and territory begins with the recognition of the ancestors whose existence and
sacrificial antecedents formed the basis of the continuity of life within the South African
and African space. Being and consciousness of identity thus begin with them: “why if
you believe do you doubt/ are they not your home address/ did they not make you go
away by your birth?” (14) Their struggle for the retention of the autochthonous existence,
even if it must be transformed, is considered a test of strength. The struggle and the
resilience in the face of the previous phases of globalization constitute a lesson for the
present: