I am a South African journalist and writer who has lived in the UK for the past 14 years and written for The Independent, The Herald, the Scotsman and TIME magazine (under the byline Claire Smith). In 2010, supported by my editor at TIME, I was awarded an Open Society Foundation media fellowship in South Africa. Aged 33, I spent three months, travelling alone through the old Transkei reporting on how democracy had impacted on the lives of those who live in tribal villages, under the rule of chiefs, many still without access to running water and electricity.
 
Woven together these stories, including that of women chiefs living in fear of assassination, give a unique insight into South Africa through voices that are rarely heard. Homeland, however, is more than reportage. As I journeyed deeper into the rural heart of South Africa I found myself on a journey I did not expect: into my own heart. I am part of the last generation that grew up under apartheid and although I believed I had a well-educated, liberal mind, this journey exposed the deep scars within me: of ignorance, fear and prejudice.
 
Homeland is an honest, thoughtful, at times funny, part-travelogue, part-memoir that would sit comfortably on the shelf alongside Alexandra Fuller’s Scribbling the Cat and Doris Lessing’s Going Home. 

At its conclusion, the book calls for the need for more open, compassionate critical debate within South Africa.