Volume 27, Number 17 · November 6, 1980
Letter from the 153rd State
By Nadine Gordimer
Just eighteen weeks after the creation of a new African state that not only its prime minister predicts will have a definitive influence on the future of all southern Africa, I had the chance to visit that state for myself. To go to Zimbabwe (or any other African country no longer ruled by a white minority) as a South African is different from going as a European or American; and to travel as a private person accustomed to observing from the underground point of view of the novelist is different from arriving with the journalist's conscious, skilled determination to find news. I was less informed than a good journalist would be; as someone both African and white, I think I understood what I saw for myself—as distinct from what I might be told or told about—rather more accurately than a visiting European or American could.
Feature, 4306 words
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