Scattered

In this memoir, Khulu Mbatha weaves the stories of friends he grew up and comrades he was in exile with into his personal narrative as a student youth leader who left the country at the time of the June 1976 uprising. Scattered across the globe as if fragmented by a powerful explosion, Mbatha and the 1976 generation he writes about, adopted new cultures and identities depending on the circumstances they found themselves in. With searing honesty, Mbatha describes the intense vulnerability of youth who left the country in 1976. Arriving in unfamiliar territories, where liberation movements and foreign governments, overwhelmed by the number of youth streaming out of South Africa, often had no clear strategy for dealing with them, they tried to find their way collectively and alone. In Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania, they landed up in ANC or PAC houses where they were given a choice between military training and studying in foreign institutions in countries where they couldn’t speak the language. In this context of confusion and ambiguity, with no idea of where their choices would take them, they journeyed into the unknown. Mbatha pulls no punches about the leadership gaps, endless waiting, financial hardships, the suicides and assassinations. The names of families, school and university friends, mentors and comrades are recollected like a refrain, a litany of remembrance throughout the book. A returning exile, Mbatha questions his ability to choose his own path rather than following the trajectory dictated by the ANC. The decision is made for him. For Mbatha, like many of his generation, June 16 1976 dictated the direction his life would take.

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