Bayanda Mzoneli

About Bayanda Mzoneli

Bayanda Mzoneli is a public servant. He writes in his personal capacity.

For a while, since 2007, the work I do involved a lot of travelling, particularly between the South Africa’s administrative capital in Pretoria and the Legislative capital in Cape Town. It also involved a frequent domestic travel for trips lasting a couple, to a handful, of nights.

As someone who hates luggage, and loves convenience, it bothered me that I did not have a pragmatic system to bring convenience and eliminate luggage. For a while I tried different combinations of messenger bags or backpacks for laptop, and either a grocery bag for extra clothes, or a suitcase. It made travelling mildly unpleasant.

Some messenger bags had an expansion zip, that could allow extra luggage, when needed, but in a 15 inch laptop size, it was small. In the 17 inch, it would be bulky when not travelling. There just seemed to be no optimal solution, after multiple visits to any luggage shop I would encounter.

Around June 2019, it occured to me that I had limited myself in my search. I got on the laptop and searched for “best backpack in the world.” Although the messenger bag does provide hands free, it also provide that odd look of tilting one shoulder to compensate for the imbalance, or if you hang it across, if hugs the suit jacket in an odd way. I considered a backpack a better option, that is why my search was directed that direction.

By pure coincidence, there were some folks in Utah in USA who had started a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, aimed at designing and producing the best back in the world. In their campaign, they had tested various backpacks in the market, looking at the material used for backpacks, the zips, the pockets and every element of a backpack. Their brand is Nomatic.

Interestingly, in their campaing video, they indicated that their design had an expansion zip that adds extra 50% of the capacity of the backpack. They also made a claim of a lifetime warranty. I was sold and bought the backpack in July 2019 on Amazon. It was delivered a few weeks later.

I was not disappointed. It was everything I had wanted in a bag, and more. I could carry just the laptop backpack for a 3 night trip, and use the expansion space for shirts and other clothes. That clothes space has a laundry side for dirty clothes.

I used the bag, with pleasure, until unfortunately, a zip broke in 2023. I briefly stopped using it, and switched to one of the old bags I had abandoned. A few weeks later, I put the sewing skills I had learnt from my late granny, to fix the zip, and got back to using it again. Only to have a different zipper breaking a couple of months later. This time, it looked like damage that requires replacement rather than repair. I stopped using it.

For about two years, I used other bags. But did not stop agonising about having to budget to get another Nomatic backpack to replace the broken one. I regarded the lifetime warranty claim, as more of a guarantee rather than a genuine commitment. Knowing how capitalism works, and since it is a USA product, it would probably require a legal battle to get them to replace it.

Because saving towards a replacement was not working, I decided to experiment with the lifetime warranty claim. I submitted the claim in February 2025. To my suprise, two weeks later, I got confirmation that my warranty claim was successful, and they will be sending me version 2 of the backpack, which has come upgrades from the version 1 I had bought in 2019, including a different zipper technology. It felt like a prank that they were really sending a new bag, worth that much for free, to replace the broken one.

A few weeks later my bag got stuck with the courier at the airport who insisted that I need to pay customs. It turns, one has to pay customs of the value of the product, not it’s price. I had thought since the price is zero, a free replacement, I need not pay anything. But either SARS or the courier company, or both had other plans. Rather than get stuck in call centre music and multiple emails back and forth, I paid the customs fee, and the bag was delivered. It is such a functional backpack. Note that you might bump into me, and see nothing remarkable about it, but it is one of the most functional backpacks in the world. On most items, utility matters more to me than beauty.

There are other backpacks in the market now, so it might no longer be the best in the world, but it appears in most top 10 lists. However, most backpack reviews are done by hikers rather than office workers. I still think it is best for office workers who occasionally travel and prefer having one bag instead of multiple bags.

Time will tell whether at the next damage, Nomatic would be willing to replace again, since their claim is lifetime warranty, and I am still on the same lifetime.