similar ways that the objectification of the hyper-realities of Western cities may have
done more, after all, to deceive postcolonial nations than they have illumined them. In the
case of the two texts, there is a clear illustration of how the collusion of the West with its
multinational firms and African governments in exploiting the resources of Africa for the
aggrandizement and gratification of Western cities have spelt doom for the continent and
induced human flight in varying designations. This is the case in London Letter and
Other Poems with respect to Lagos and the flight to London, as is the case of the Niger
Delta cities where the oil “resource curse” is aggravated by the neglect and conspiratorial
repression and pacification of the peoples’ agitation for better conditions of living by
both the state and the oil multinationals. It is also this fact of the repression and
pacification, which is antecedented by colonial repression and pacification of the region
that today accounts for the rising profile of the Niger Delta space in matters of sub-
nationalism. Nonetheless, in both texts, the realization of the smoke-screen of attraction
of western cities catalyses a thought of return where global capitalism can be fought on
home front.
Chapter Five has engaged with two of Serote’s post-apartheid poems, Freedom Lament
and Song and History is the Home Address. Both texts are unified by the fact that they
constitute a poet’s expression of the historical antecedent of a nation once defined by the
experiential precariousness of liberation struggle and exile. But beyond the privileging of
memory and history, the texts also stand out in their formal innovations as epics of a
nation’s long battle against imperialism made poignant by racism. Yet beyond the rituals
of remembrance and celebration of the resilience of a subordinated black group, a
sensibility which finds solidarity in the larger pan-African consciousness and courses
through Freedom Lament and Song , History is the Home Address has been read against
the hypothetical backdrop of the possibility of future exile. Thus, by deploying Bill
Ashcroft’s theory of transnation, the chapter has also looked into the ramifications of
Serote’s reflection on globalization as a phenomenon whose capacity to engender “going
away” cannot be ignored. On a last note, it is important to note however that the failure of
a post-liberation South Africa to tackle head-on the challenges of transformation with