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Sisonke Msimang
Writer • Activist
Sisonke Msimang is a South African-Australian writer, activist, and political analyst whose work examines race, gender, identity, and democracy. Born in exile to ANC freedom fighter parents, she grew up in Zambia, Kenya, and Canada before studying in the US and South Africa. Her acclaimed works include the memoir Always Another Country and the biography The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela. A former UNAIDS gender advisor and head of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, she has held fellowships at Yale and the Aspen Institute, writes for outlets like The Guardian and The New York Times, and serves as Head of Storytelling at Perth's Centre for Stories.
Events featuring
this guest
Friday Sept. 18 2026 • 2:00 PM | Institute of African Studies, Columbia University
The Stranger at Home: Afrophobia and the Limits of Black Solidarity
Sisonke Msimang · E. Tendayi Achiume · Sean Jacobs · Amaha Kassa · moderated by Abosede George
Across the twentieth century, Pan-Africanism imagined a commons linking Africa and its diasporas through shared histories of dispossession, resistance, and return. The present has strained that promise. With South Africa as a central point of departure, this conversation examines how African migrants are made into strangers within African and Black political life. Bringing together writers, scholars, and migrant-rights organizers, the session asks how citizenship, labor, class, borders, national injury, and state failure shape the limits of solidarity, and what solidarity requires if it must transcend slogans into law, shelter, public services, political voice, and everyday infrastructure.