Alex La Guma

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Justin Alexander La Guma (born February 20, 1925 in Cape Town , † October 11, 1985 in Havana , Cuba ) was a South African writer and opposition politician.

Life

La Guma was born in District Six in Cape Town. His father was James La Guma, a senior official in the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union and other unions, as well as in the South African Communist Party (SACP).

After La Guma had successfully completed his training at a technical school in 1945, he worked as an accountant and became an active member of a trade union. He was fired after organizing a strike and was politically active. He joined the Young Communist League in 1947 . A year later he became a member of the SACP. In 1953 he became a founding member and first President of the South African Colored People's Organization (SACPO), a representation of the Coloreds closely related to the African National Congress (ANC) . In 1954 he married. From 1955 he worked as a journalist for the progressive South African magazine New Age . In the same year he was one of the organizers of the Congress of the People, which passed the Freedom Charter . However, he did not attend because he was arrested on the way from Cape Town to Johannesburg . He was one of the defendants in the Treason Trial from 1956 and, like all other defendants, was acquitted after several years.

He published his first story, Nocturn, in 1957. He was shot in 1958, but survived. He was arrested again after the Sharpeville massacre and banned under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1962 . In the same year his book A Walk in the Night and Other Stories was published by a Nigerian publisher. The cover story portrays life in District Six, which was later evicted. The book was also banned immediately in South Africa. In 1963, La Guma was placed under house arrest for five years . Some books appeared in the English-language series Seven Seas Publishers of the East Berlin- based publisher Volk und Welt .

In 1966, La Guma received an exit permit for himself and his family and moved to London , where he worked before as an insurance clerk, journalist, screenwriter and eventually as a book author. His book The Stone Country is set in a South African prison. From 1973 to 1979 he was Deputy Secretary General, then Secretary General of the Afro-Asian Writers ' Organization until his death after receiving the organization's Lotus Prize in 1969 . His last book Time of the Butcherbird (German: "Die Zeit des Würgers") was published in 1979 and is about a Boer family in the Karoo , who ruthlessly drives the locals away.

In 1978 La Guma became the ANC's representative for Central and South America. He resided in Cuba , where he died of a heart attack in 1985 .

Several of his books have been translated into German.

Quote

"[LaGuma's] fiction has become an important social and historical testament of the apartheid era. Through his vivid descriptions of person and place, and particularly in his accurate rendition of the idioms and peculiarities of polyglot Cape Town, he was able to capture the appalling racial conditions that existed. - [La Guma's] fiction became an important social and historical testament of the apartheid era. Through his vivid descriptions of people and places and, above all, through his precise reproduction of idioms and peculiarities of the polyglot Cape Town, he managed to capture the repulsive racist conditions of the time. "

- Paul A. Scanlon: Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 225 South Africa . Gale Cengage Learning, ISBN 0787631345

Awards

Works

  • 1962: A Walk in the Night and Other Stories. Mbari, Ibadan
  • 1964: And a Threefold Cord. Seven Seas Publishers , Berlin (GDR)
  • 1967: The Stone Country. Seven Seas Publishers, Berlin (GDR)
  • 1971: apartheid. Seven Seas Publishers, Berlin (GDR) (as editor)
  • 1972: In the Fog of the Season's End. Heinemann, London
  • 1978: A Soviet Journey. Progress Publishers, Moscow
  • 1979: Time of the Butcherbird. Heinemann, London

literature

  • Kathleen M. Balutansky: The Novels of Alex La Guma: The Representation of a Political Conflict. Three Continents Press, 1990
  • Roger Field: Alex La Guma: A Literary and Political Biography. James Currey, Woodbridge 2010, ISBN 978-1847010179
  • Cecil Abrahams: Memories of Home: The Writings of Alex La Guma. Africa Research Publications, London 1992, ISBN 086543235-X
  • Near Yousaf: Alex La Guma: Politics and Resistance. Heinemann, London 2001, ISBN 0325001898
  • Detlev Theodor Reichel: Writer against Apartheid: Studies on contemporary South African literature. Hermann, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-88241-001-9
  • Anders Breidlid: Resistance and Consciousness in Kenya and South Africa. Subalternity and Representation in the Novels of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and Alex La Guma. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2002

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on November 10, 2011
  2. ↑ a b c d e Detailed portrait at answers.com (English), accessed on November 10, 2011
  3. ^ A b c Human Sciences Research Council: New dictionary of South African biography. Volume 1 (biography), p. 127 at googlebooks (English), accessed on November 10, 2011
  4. ↑ List of medal bearers 2003 ( Memento of July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
personal data
SURNAME La Guma, Alex
ALTERNATIVE NAMES La Guma, Justin Alexander (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African writer and opposition politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Cape Town
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1985
Place of death Havana , Cuba