Swimming with Cobras Q&A ________

Book Description: Arriving from high society England to rural South Africa in the turbulent 1960s, Rosemary Smith is out of her depth. But when faced with the startling reality of her new home, Rosemary joins the Black Sash—the white women-led anti-Apartheid organization of which she would one day become national vice president—thrusting her into the interior workings of a country struggling violently towards democracy.

Pulled from her journals charting decades of justice work, this emotional and engrossing memoir is a reexamination of the ally, a rare insight into South Africa’s democratic transition, and the inspiring true story of a community of women who set a new standard for civic responsibility and quietly changed the landscape of an entire nation. Buy the book here. Author Bio: Rosemary Smith started working with the Black Sash in about 1967, first in the Advice Office and then holding various positions in the organisation, including being a Vice President. At the dissolution of the membership organisation, she was employed as Director of the Grahamstown Black Sash Advice Office for five years. She is currently on a number of local boards and trusts and is chairperson of the Grahamstown Friends of the Library. She still lives in Grahamstown with her husband, Malvern van Wyk Smith, where they raised their four children. Swimming with Cobras is her first book.

What was the main inspiration behind writing Swimming with Cobras?

By South African standards, my own life was not remarkable, but I did live through remarkable events and shared experiences with so many extraordinary people. I wanted to recount these from my own perspective. Also, I had all those boxes of diaries and notes that needed to be dealt with!

I love the quote on the first page that reads, "History no longer belonged exclusively to the eminent and the great, and I sensed that as a woman making a new life in an alien land I would have a story to tell." Did you have a sense from early on that your journals and experiences would eventually become a published book, or was that something you discovered gradually over the course of your journey?

I have always loved books, especially ones about other countries. I did not consciously envisage writing one, but I suppose once I started reviewing my materials I did find myself hoping that there might be a story that my friends back in England would find interesting. I could not have imagined how successful the book would turn out to be in South Africa!

You came from a relatively sheltered upbringing. Looking back, how do you think that shaped the [second half] the rest of your life once you moved to South Africa?

As a girl, I loved fun and romance, but my training as a medical social worker taught me to consider the lives of others with compassion, and my interest in Amnesty International introduced me to the causes of social justice and human rights.

You came from such a vastly different landscape and culture when you moved from England to South Africa. Looking back, what was the most challenging aspect of adapting to your new life: the language, the culture, or the physical landscape?

Some of the conservative colonial culture in Grahamstown was difficult to adjust to, especially as my political involvement was frowned on by the establishment. The traditional Xhosa culture and language of the townships I cannot claim ever to have truly got to know. But the culture of camaraderie among those of all cultures who worked together in the struggle was an inspiration. The Eastern Cape landscapes were certainly alien to begin with, but I grew to love them and feel at home in them.

What, if anything, surprised you most about how you eventually came to feel at home in South Africa?

By the time Nelson Mandela was released in 1990 I had lived in South Africa twenty-five years and had raised a South African family. It had begun to feel entirely natural to be living here, but his release and the subsequent democratic election were the moments when I knew I wanted full citizenship in this country. I suppose it did surprise me that I could love and be proud of South Africa, but I think everyone who had previously felt conflicted about the country of their birth felt the same now. We all rejoiced in the freedom to feel proud of being South Africans.

You write that the mother of one of your children's friends discouraged her child from being friends with yours because you were regarded as a communist. From your perspective, how did the way others perceived you affect your activism? How do you think activism as a whole is impacted by the perceptions and assumptions of others?

The life of my friend Priscilla Hall was an outstanding example of this. She defied risk because she was utterly principled, and while she was often vilified by the establishment, she was also admired and, in the end, deeply loved and respected by all who knew her.

You describe your work with the Black Sash as a major turning point in your life. Looking back, what is the most important lesson you took away from your time working with the organization?

In my youth I had always been described as a bit of a Pollyanna, blithely believing that things will always work out well. The Black Sash, by contrast, was a down-to-earth, practical and entirely dependable organization. We worked hard, researched hard, insisted on being well informed and rational in our protests and campaigns, and once again, the camaraderie of strong women was a great strength. Their intelligence and determination was an education for me.

The title, Swimming with Cobras, is a metaphor for living alongside danger without always knowing exactly where it is. When did you realize this was a fitting metaphor for your experiences?  It was only towards the end that I realized that my actual experience with a cobra in the river represented the nature of the story I was telling. My visceral reaction to the half-hidden snake brought back the atmosphere of the time and helped focus the book.

Your memoir contains many dates, historical details, and political events. Could you talk about the process of writing it and how you kept track of so much information? How did you balance your personal memories with the historical record as you pieced everything together?

Throughout the years, I kept diaries and notes which I squirrelled away safely. Later I started organizing them into a coherent narrative, but it was only during the editing process that the historical and political backbone was consolidated. By then I had realized that I really did have a worthwhile manuscript on my hands and that it needed to be properly rooted.

You mention in your acknowledgements that the book had a long gestation period and was written from the diaries you kept since arriving in South Africa in 1966. Could you talk about the process of writing a book over so many decades? How did revisiting those diaries over the years, and the changing historical and personal context surrounding them, shape the way you approached the book and told the story?

See previous answer. I did not work continuously on what I foresaw would be a book. It was only after retirement that the notes were resurrected, and the writing process began.

Did you run into any surprises or challenges while writing?

I had to learn quite a bit about what makes a good memoir, and even then a surprising amount of editing and rewriting was required – all of which was time well spent. And I had no idea how difficult it would be to find a publisher!

What do you hope readers take away from Swimming with Cobras?

Despite the seriousness of most of my themes, I would like my readers also to sense how much joy I took from the friendship, service and common purpose that united us. I also hope my book contributes to the record of the Black Sash and honors the women of Grahamstown. I want it to be a book about the anti-apartheid involvement of ordinary people making history on the ground.