Alex La Guma

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

Life

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

After La Guma 1945 had successfully completed his training at a technical school, he worked as an accountant and was an active member of a union. He was released after he had organized a strike, and became politically active. He joined the Young Communist League in 1947. A year later he became a member of the SACP. He was a founding member in 1953, and first president of the South African Coloured People's Organisation ( SACPO ), one of the African National Congress ( ANC) related representation of Coloureds. 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 adopted the Freedom Charter. However, he did not participate in it because he was arrested on the way from Cape Town to Johannesburg. He was a member from 1956 to the accused in the Treason Trial and was acquitted as all the other defendants after several years.

His first story, Nocturn, he published 1957. 1958 he was shot, but survived. After the Sharpeville massacre, he was again arrested and banned in 1962 after the Suppression of Communism Act. In the same year appeared his book A Walk in the Night and Other Stories in a Nigerian publisher. The title story portrays the life in District Six, which was later evicted. Also the book has been banned in South Africa immediately. 1963 La Guma was provided for five years under house arrest. Some books published in the English publisher Seven Seas Publishers, which was established in East Berlin.

In 1966, La Guma for himself and his family an exit permit and went to London, where he also worked as a book author before as an insurance clerk, journalist, screenwriter and. His book, The Stone Country plays in a South African prison. From 1973 until his death, he was Deputy General Secretary of the Afro-Asian Writers' Conference, after he had received the 1969 Lotus Prize this organization. His latest book, Time of the Butcher Bird ( German: "The time of the Strangler " ) was released in 1979 and is about a Boer family in the Karoo, which distributes the locals ruthless.

In 1978, La Guma representative of the ANC 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 to 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, hey what able to capture the appalling racial conditions did Existed. - [ La Gumas ] bellestristische works have become a significant social and historical testament to the era of apartheid. Through his vivid descriptions of people and places, and especially by its exact representation of idioms and peculiarities of the polyglot Cape Town, he managed to capture the former repulsive racist states. "

Awards

Works

• The time of the strangler. Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-87476-153-3