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  • Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid
  • Meta L. Schettler (bio)
Wilderson, Frank B., III. Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid. Boston: South End Press, 2008.

In his classic study of colonialism The Wretched of the Earth [1961], Frantz Fanon wrote, “The violence of the colonial regime and counter-violence of the native balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity” (88). In Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, Frank B. Wilderson III, powerfully explores this axiom, at times in sharp, unforgettable detail, at times with deliberate obfuscation in the name of covert operations and the secret work of the armed wing of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Both African-American and South African writers have access to a full and deep tradition of autobiographical narrative as truth-telling political witness, including such classics as: Richard Wright’s Black Boy [1945], Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land [1965], Assata Shakur’s Assata [1987], and Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy [1986]. Specifically in relation to the armed struggle and political violence in South Africa, a number of memoirs have come out post-1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic elections including: Gillian Slovo’s Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country [1997], Letlapa Mphahlele’s Child of This Soil: My Life as a Freedom Fighter [2002], and Pumla Gobodo-Madizikela’s A Human Being Died That Night [2003].

What distinguishes Incognegro from this vast tradition of autobiography and expanding field of post-apartheid commentary is Wilderson’s thoughtful weaving of past and present, shifting dramatically between an unfolding relationship with a white woman poet/ professor in California, difficult memories of South Africa (his marriage and participation in ANC work), and recollections of his family and youth in the Civil Rights/Vietnam War era. These three separate seasons of Wilderson’s life frequently intersect and reflect each other in complex and interesting ways. For example, he recounts a tumultuous and conflicted relationship with his demanding, upwardly mobile parents, the tension of adolescent years heightened by Northern racism in an integrated neighborhood and the volatile political context of the 1960s. The philosophy of Black Power gave him access to revolutionary principles and rhetoric swirling in American popular culture and shaped his nascent political identity but also put him in constant conflict with his family. Wilderson’s memories of the murderous attacks on the Black Panthers, especially the killing of Fred Hampton in Chicago, and the violent retaliation against students at Berkeley, Kent State, and Jackson State eerily parallel the violence in South Africa when political assassinations and student uprisings occurred almost daily in the last years of apartheid. Additionally, as an academic, Wilderson relentlessly challenged institutional racism in transitional South Africa and more recently in post-9/11 America. However, this commitment to political work continued to complicate his relationship with his parents throughout the narrative.

Wilderson taught classes at two universities in South Africa, the University of the Witswatersrand and Vista University, both in Johannesburg, and he helped organize protests by student groups while simultaneously working with an underground cell in MK. From his first trip to South Africa in 1989, as an outsider, Wilderson painfully predicted (using Fanon) the cooption of the ANC’s radicalism by liberal establishment forces and Nelson Mandela’s probable role in allowing that cooption. South Africans rarely received Wilderson’s Marxist critiques of Mandela willingly, which is understandable, but in the end Wilderson’s analysis proved prophetic. Wilderson recalls one memorable incident [End Page 285] which even put his life at risk, when, during a secret meeting with an MK cadre, the comrade slammed his head against the steering wheel of his car and held him at gunpoint in response to Wilderson’s commentary on Mandela. Wilderson recalls his thoughts in that moment, “Breathe, Frank, breathe. I knew that he had a black belt in karate and I could feel it in his firm, expert grip pinching my neck. Guess you don’t do Jesus jokes in Jerusalem” (287). Despite this frequent backlash, Mandela’s reputation being unassailable, Wilderson also documents how his own immediate circle of ANC comrades attempted...

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