within the cumulative temporality which dates back to the incursion of the West into
Africa on an imperial scale: “these six hundred years of Africa fighting” (64). The
reconfiguration of space, which also has an implication for time, has consequently
ingested a reconfiguration of citizenship and Africaness as well. That is why there is a
recognition of Africa’s peoples as being cast “in shades which [range] from blue to black
to ginger to honey”; and they “dance with the light of the sun and the shades of the
moon.” (64). Therefore, in the present temporal and spatial reckoning for these Africans,
and more specifically South Africans, “black and white”, the space of the nation becomes
paramount even when “going away” is imminent. For that matter, even when they must
go, the recurrent cautionary caveat stills sounds out clearly in a tone of solemn finality:
so if we go
all of us will remember our home address
to let the plenty of the earth
from its belly bring centuries of peace
to this earth
which spins and spins and spins on its pin (65)If the hypothetical high moments of globalization are to be measured by the degree of
world peace it generates, even when many from different spaces will be caught in the
vortex of the ‘spinning of the earth’, by emphasizing the need to “remember the home
address”, Serote makes a highly useful and proactive statement on what should be South
Africans’ and other Africans’ right attitude toward the nation. Put differently, the concept
of the transnation as a counter-narrative within the discourse of postcolonialism, while
pointing to the inadequacies of diaspora, it can be argued, has also succeeded in
redefining the abstraction of diaspora in a manner that keeps the nation safely on board.
This is the import of Ashcroft’s assertion that in the end “diaspora begins at home” (8).
There is no doubt that Serote’s History is the Home Address speaks inventively to this
declamation in the age of globalization.
Besides, if as Cornelia Pearsall remarks, the utility of dramatic monologues is reinforced
by the transformative cause that defines them (71), Serote’s History is the Home Address
lives up to this expectation in the way it charts a new course for the pursuit of a new
diasporic identity in the age of globalization. It is important, however, to remark that he