How a banned book became a threat to one of the world’s cruelest regimes

Alex La Guma was living proof of the lies of racist propaganda that depicted black people as second-class citizens incapable of fine art or political organization

“It crouched like a slugged boxer, shaking his spinning head to clear it, while he took the count, waiting to rise before the final 10. Life still throbbed in its aching arms and fingers; wholesale arrests had battered it. The leader and the cadres filled the prisons or retreated into exile. Behind them, all over the country, tiny groups and individuals who had escaped the net still moved like moles underground, trying to link up in the darkness of lost communications, and broken contacts.”

In these words that evoke the image of a battered but undefeated boxer, South African writer Alex La Guma famously described the anti-apartheid movement.

La Guma died in Havana, Cuba, on October 11, 1985. This was a writer whose name was banned in his homeland of South Africa, but in the Soviet Union it came to symbolize unyielding resistance against apartheid and loyalty to the ideals of freedom. La Guma’s life is the chronicle of a struggle in which literary creativity served as a direct extension of political activism.

Understanding apartheid in South Africa

To grasp the significance of La Guma as an activist and writer, one must consider the context in which he wrote. Apartheid – an Afrikaans word meaning “separateness” – was not just a system of racial segregation; it was a totalitarian ideology enshrining the supremacy of a white minority over the black majority. Officially instituted by the National Party in 1948, apartheid lasted until 1994.

This oppressive regime was underpinned by numerous laws, such as the Population Registration Act, which categorized citizens by race, the Group Areas Act, which designated separate residential areas for different races, and the Immorality Act, which prohibited sexual relationships between races.

Under apartheid, Black South Africans were stripped of civil rights, freedom of movement, and any real control over their own lives. Dissent and the fight for equality were ruthlessly crushed by state security forces. The apartheid government viewed the USSR as its ideological nemesis, accusing it of stoking racial division and supporting “terrorists” from the African National Congress (ANC) party.

“I kept the issue of Izvestia that my father brought back from Moscow as a precious relic”

In this atmosphere of total inequality, La Guma’s talent was forged. Born in 1925 in the slums of Cape Town, he grew up immersed in a culture of resistance. His father, Jimmy La Guma, joined the Communist Party of South Africa, which sought social justice through the lens of Soviet experience. 

As Alex La Guma recalled, “Father and others like him used the teachings of Lenin to show workers in the country that they could achieve happiness for themselves and their children.” In 1927, Jimmy La Guma even attended a congress in Moscow – a trip that was much talked about in the family. “I kept the issue of Izvestia that my father brought back from Moscow and that featured a report about the congress, like a precious relic. Unfortunately, it disappeared during yet another police raid on my apartment in Cape Town,” La Guma recalled.

Double threat

This episode vividly illustrates the persecution that La Guma faced. The apartheid government saw him as a “double threat” – a charismatic political leader capable of mobilizing the masses and a gifted writer whose works shaped international opinion against the regime.

His early novels, such as ‘A Walk in the Night’ (1962), served as a shocking and brutally honest window into the reality of apartheid for the world. La Guma didn’t just depict the poverty and humiliation experienced by South Africa’s black population; he captured the psychological toll the system exacted on individuals, how it shattered lives, severed connections, and drove people to despair.

La Guma’s prose, combining stark realism with poetic metaphor, rendered the unbearable existence of black South Africans comprehensible to readers all over the world. This was a weapon of words – one that the regime, accustomed to brute force and imprisonment, had no defense against. La Guma was living proof of the lies of the racist propaganda that portrayed black people as second-class citizens incapable of fine art or political organization.

“The South African as a writer faces problems peculiar to his time, his place and his color”

To silence the writer, the authorities resorted to repressive measures and arrests. He was first arrested in 1956 and charged with treason. The South African government placed La Guma, an active member of the African National Congress (ANC), on a blacklist. One particularly cruel tactic used against him was the “Ninety-day solitary confinement clause” of the General Law Amendment Act, which allowed for individuals to be held in solitary confinement for up to 90 days without trial simply for criticizing the government.

La Guma’s wife, Blanche Herman, was also imprisoned. He later recalled, “ You know, by chance our cells were located close to each other. And on November 7th, leaning against the bars, we spontaneously started singing ‘ The Internationale’ together.” In 1966, La Guma was arrested again under the “180-day solitary confinement clause” of the Criminal Procedure Act. In total, he spent nearly 11 years spent in prison and under house arrest.

Unable to break the writer’s spirit through imprisonment, the apartheid regime resorted to put him to literary death: La Guma’s books were banned. The writer himself was forced into exile in 1966.

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In 1968, South African writer and future Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer noted that dozens of writers, including La Guma, were facing repression in South Africa.

“The South African as a writer faces problems peculiar to his time, his place and his color. They are the limitation by law of the freedom of expression and the limitation of human experience by the compartmentalized organization of South African society… This has happened to almost all black and colored South African writers – Ezekiel Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi, Alex La Guma, Dennis Brutus, Can Themba, Bloke Modisane – with the 1966 blanket ban on 46 South Africans living abroad. The Publications and Entertainments Act of 1963 can ban a book under any one of 97 definitions of what it classes an ‘undesirable’. This act and the one it superseded have banned 11,000 books.”

However, censorship could not silence La Guma; his literary voice resonated even more powerfully abroad.

Undefeated boxer

For La Guma, writing was inseparable from social activism. In 1973, he described his creative philosophy: “Maxim Gorky once said that a writer is the eyes and ears of their era. To genuinely capture an entire epoch in one’s work, a writer must possess a keen eye and a clear worldview. A true writer cannot isolate themselves from the struggles of the people or the fight for human happiness, freedom, and social justice.”

La Guma adhered strictly to these principles of social justice. Such works as ‘And a Threefold Cord’ and ‘The Stone Country’, which were translated into multiple languages, unveiled the tragic reality faced by black South Africans.

In 1972, he published two landmark books: a collection titled ‘Apartheid: A Collection of Writings on South African Racism by South Africans’ and the poignant novel ‘In the Fog of the Seasons’ End’. In this novel, he vividly likened the anti-apartheid movement to a battered but undefeated boxer, a metaphor that resonated deeply with civil rights activists in the US and beyond. La Guma’s writings became a world-famous chronicle of the apartheid era.

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“I walked the streets of Moscow, watching happy faces”

The USSR emerged as both a political compass and a source of inspiration for La Guma. During his visits to the Soviet Union, he closely observed life in this diverse nation, which later formed the basis for his book ‘A Soviet Journey’. He expressed genuine admiration for the Soviet experience, stating in an interview with Vechernyaya Moskva, “I walked the streets of Moscow, watching happy faces, and couldn’t stop saying: yes, only socialism can give people all these wonderful things that I see around me,” Attending the Fourth Congress of Soviet Writers, he said, “The people of South Africa greatly value the support the Soviet Union provides to the African National Liberation Movement.”

La Guma’s stature as a writer-activist gained international recognition. He received the Lotus Prize for Literature and, in 1979, led the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau, where he championed the idea of creative intellectuals taking responsibility for the world’s fate, saying that “preventing nuclear catastrophe is the duty of all decent people on Earth.”  

Today, Alex La Guma’s legacy is more relevant than ever. His battle against racial intolerance and social oppression, along with his belief in the power of words and justice, continues to resonate across time. As he poignantly stated, “I admit our hair may have turned white... But it’s not us who have aged. Our enemy, imperialism, is what has grown old, while we are sustained by the vital force of our just cause, which keeps us young. The struggle for humanity’s liberation is the source of eternal youth.”