Alex La Guma (Studies in African Literature)

Nahem Yousaf explores the novels of Alex La Guma to reveal their contrasts, their multifaceted dialogues with apartheid, and what they inform us about the oppressive nature of the apartheid system that strove to deny non-whites their humanity. All of La Guma's fiction is overtly political in that he sought to reclaim a place and subjectivity for blacks through his creative writing. All of his writings deal with the violence of apartheid and regard violence as an inevitable aspect of anti-apartheid struggles. Conceiving the role of the writer in the same terms as that of the revolutionary freedom fighter, La Guma's writings reflect the realizations of the African National Congress leadership that only through violent resistance against apartheid would the oppressed find liberation. Although some literary critics regard La Guma's fiction as one dimensional and flat, Yousaf argues that La Guma's characters reveal fully the complexities and contradictions of life under apartheid.