THE WAY HOME, memories of a South African in exile

336pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, University of Johannesburg Press, Johannesburg, 2024

ISBN: 9781776489725

Morley Nkosi on growing up in apartheid South Africa, his political activism, and the 30 years he spent in exile, mostly in the USA. 

Morley Nkosi was born in 1935 and grew up in Johannesburg. A leader in the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), he went into exile in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre. After travelling through several African countries he spent a year in London, before moving to New York and then Hoboken, New Jersey, where he lived for over 20 years. He earned a PhD in economics, and taught at Rutgers and Hofstra Universities as well as the New School for Social Research. He returned to South Africa in 1991, and has worked as a consultant to regional economic integration organisations, and served on the boards of several South African companies. He also served as acting Vice-Chancellor at the then University of the Transkei. A founding member of USA for Africa, he is currently Managing Associate of Morley Nkosi Associates. He is the author of Black Workers, White Supervisors: The origins of the labor structure in South Africa (2017). 

"The Way Home is a gripping account of the sojourn of one tired South African; tired of the savagery of grand and petty apartheid; and defiant of the degrading assaults on his humanity and psyche ... It is a lonely and rough journey full of tribulations, but equally infused with lessons about possibilities that could not have been imagined under the stifling conditions of apartheid South Africa" Dr Mokubung Nkomo, author of Student Culture and Activism in Back South African Universities: The roots of resistance