Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer, activist and political analyst based in Perth, Western Australia, whose focus is on race, gender, and politics. She is known for her memoir Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018), a biography of anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Msimang was born in Zambia in 1974, where her South African freedom fighter father, Mavuso Msimang, had gone into exile, along with many other members of the then banned organisation the African National Congress. Her mother, Ntombi, was a Swazi accountant, and Sisonke grew up within the community in exile, along with sisters Mandla and Zeng.^[1]

Msimang initially grew up around South African freedom fighters such as her father and great-uncle.^[2] Her father was a leading member of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), in the 1960s,^[3] and her great uncle was one of the founding members of the ANC.The family later moved to Kenya and then to Canada in 1984 when Sisonke was 10.^[4] Msimang completed most of her schooling in Ottawa, Canada, and her final years at the International School in Kenya as an expatriate.^[5]

Between 1992 and 1996 Msimang earned a Bachelor of Arts in politics and communication studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota,^[4] and returned to South Africa in 1997. According to Msimang she decided to begin a career in human rights and social justice, which brought her to become an activist.^[2]

Between 2002 and 2005 she obtained a master's degree in political science^[4] from the African Gender Institute^[6] at the University of Cape Town.^[4]

Msimang's first job was in 1997 as a programme officer at the Australian High Commission in Pretoria, which is where she met her husband Simon White.^[5][7]

From 2003 to 2005 Msimang worked as a gender advisor for UNAIDS to help forge HIV/AIDS policies specifically relating to African women and girls. From 2005 she was the Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa until November 2012.^[8][6] In June 2013, she took up a senior role in policy development at the Sonke Gender Justice Network, which worked with men and boys in promoting gender equality.^[6]

Msimang has held fellowships at Yale University where she was a Yale World Fellow,^[9] the Aspen Institute and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.^[10][6] She was also selected as a World Economic Fourm (WEF) Young Global Leader.^[6] She is also an honorary board member of the Democracy Works Foundation.^[11]

Msimang began her writing career in earnest from 2013, writing regular columns for the centre-right Daily Maverick.^[12] In her first book, Always Another Country, she thanks editor Branko Brkic and CEO Styli Charalambous for 'giving me a start'.^[5]

She has been both storyteller and facilitator for The Moth and TED events,^[13] has hosted and participated in several Doha Debates,^[14][15] and in 2020 was the Literature and Ideas curator for Perth Writers Week.^[13] She won the Western Australian Writer's Fellowship at the 2020 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.^[16]

As of 2021^[update] Msimang is Head Story Trainer at the Centre for Stories in Perth.^[17]

In 2017 Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home was published in South Africa, with the Australian edition published the following year.^[18][19][4] a memoir in which she describes her childhood and living in different countries, including what South Africa was like when she returned to it.^[10] Written after the sudden death in 2014 of her beloved mother Ntombi, who had championed microfinance for female entrepreneurs in South Africa,^[1] the book was highly praised by authors Tim Winton, Njabulo S. Ndebele and Alice Pung,^[10] and earned accolades such the New York Times 2018 staff favourite of 2018 and CBC's Best International Non-fiction of 2018.^[5] She writes in it about her upbringing among the ANC exiles: "Reft of a physical place in this world we can call home, exile makes us love the idea of South Africa. We are bottle-fed the dream: South Africa is not simply about non-racialism and equality but something much more profound".^[1]

The next year she wrote The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela, an investigation of the rise and fall of anti-apartheid activist and ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.^[20] She has written for a range of international publications such as The New York Times, The Daily Maverick, The Guardian,^[4] and Washington Post.^[13]

In 2014, Msimang moved to Perth, Western Australia, where she lives with her Australian husband, their two children and his children from a previous relationship.^[1]

• Official website