Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Erect statue for city’s Alex La Guma
SA’s greatest novelist deserves to be commemorated, writes Lindsay Johns
THE DISTASTEFULLY myopic and misguided furore surrounding the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at UCT, mired as it has been in scatological controversy, for me prompts a far bigger and more relevant question: where is the statue in this city to arguably the greatest novelist South Africa, let alone Cape Town, has ever produced – a man who was not only a prodigiously talented writer but also a valiant hero of the anti-apartheid struggle?
Alex La Guma is today sadly a forgotten colossus, but in the 1960s and 1970s he was indubitably the Black Dickens. An astonishing creative artist as well as an ardent freedom fighter, he was the author of five masterful novels – A Walk In the Night (1962), And A Threefold Cord (1964), The Stone Country (1967), In The Fog Of The Season’s End (1972) and Time Of the Butcherbird (1979), plus 14 short stories, one travel guide to Russia and a plethora of essays on anti-apartheid topics.
Born in District 6 in 1925, he attended Trafalgar High School then worked as a reporter for the New Age newspaper. Politically active in the SACP and SA Coloured People's Organisation from an early age, he was one of the defendants in the 1956 Treason Trials. He was placed under house arrest in 1962 but continued to write and subsequently went into exile in London with his wife and family in 1966. From 1978 until his death in 1985, he was the ANC’s political representative in Cuba.
La Guma’s novels – of which the first four are set in and immortalise Cape Town – articulate a fierce opposition to apartheid, a lyrical celebration of the working class coloured community and the use of literature in the service of liberty, equality and humanity. Furthermore, they are all couched in seductively ornate prose.
La Guma devoted the full power of his artistic genius to the dream of a non-racial South Africa, where all South Africans could live in harmony and where no one was divorced of their humanity on account of their skin colour.
While his novels for the most part dealt with the plight of coloured people under apartheid – and in so doing helped to instil in several generations of coloured Capetonians a tangible and life-affirming sense of pride and racial dignity, La Guma was a devout humanist who fought for justice, freedom and dignity for all.
So where is the statue in his honour in the Company Gardens, on the Parade or at the top of Adderley Street? The fact that one does not already exist and that so many children (and adults) in the city do not even know his name, let alone read his novels, is a testament to the appalling and demeaning neglect which La Guma has suffered and which is tantamount to literary, cultural and racial sacrilege.
Why has he been overlooked for so long in South Africa, not to mention here in Cape Town? Has he been marginalised because he unfashion- ably put literature in the service of politics, because he was coloured (when it is perhaps now more politically advantageous to be African) or even because of his communist sympathies? Is it due to the collective amnesia of the vacuous “Born Free” generation, wallowing in parochial materialism and political apathy, or because true heroism is no longer deemed worthy unless it is accompanied by a Facebook campaign and an ironic Twitter hashtag?
Whatever the reason, we must act with alacrity to rectify this grave oversight and make timely amends to commemorate him. Therefore I send forth this article to the people and the City of Cape Town, the Cape Town Heritage Trust and the mayoral committee as both a clarion call and a formal request for the erection of a statue in honour of La Guma.
The Romantic poet Percy Shelley’s trenchant sonnet Ozymandias famously taught us about the ephemerality of earthly glory and mortal fame. Likewise, we must ensure that La Guma’s name is not lost in the insentient annals of time. In accordance with Horace’s famous assertion that his poetry would be a monument more lasting than bronze, La Guma’s novels will doubtless live on, but a statue of him would educate Capetonians about his many accomplishments and fittingly proclaim his greatness to the world.
La Guma not only wrote profoundly moving stories about characters we can relate to, but he also used his formidable literary prowess in the service of the poor, the disenfranchised and the oppressed – those whom history had conspired to deny a voice. His novels and his life are an eloquent testament to man’s inhumanity to man and the tenacity of the human spirit to endure, overcome and triumph in the most arduous of conditions.
La Guma was a novelist of potent genius and subtle mastery who used his copious talents to do what he knew to be right, as well as a man of indomitable personal courage and huge moral rectitude. Thus, what more fitting individual could Cape Town choose to hold up as the embodiment of all that is best about this city?
La Guma was no rapacious coloniser devoted to plunder, nor a duplicitous politician bent on selfaggrandisement, but a man of deep integrity who fought with his pen to elevate the human race.
La Guma selflessly dedicated his creative energies to the betterment of this city and its people. Like Shakespeare, Albert Camus and James Baldwin before him, he was an apostle of humanity. We must now in turn make sure that we honour his memory, promote his remarkable literary legacy and ensure that the compassionate humanity which he promulgated is never forgotten.
I yearn for the day when I can gaze with admiration, respect and pride upon a statue of Alex La Guma. When I can discern the avuncular twinkle in his eye as he surveys Table Mountain with a look of satisfaction born from the knowledge that the righteous cause he devoted his life to was ultimately victorious, only then will I know that we have done our greatest son proud.
● Johns is a writer and broadcaster and a non-residential Fellow at the Hutchins Centre at Harvard University.