Cape Town - October 11 this year marked 37 years since the death of District Six novelist and anti-apartheid activist Alex La Guma.
La Guma suffered a heart attack and died in exile in Havana, Cuba, where he served as the first chief representative of the ANC in the Caribbean.
Dean of St George’s Cathedral, the Reverend Michael Weeder, said La Guma has been recognised and celebrated across the world, but ironically there was a silence about his memory in Cape Town.
Weeder recollected with fondness his appreciation for the literary works of La Guma, saying he wondered how La Guma was able to write in such a manner that had the reader pondering deeply after every sentence.
“It was in the way he so vividly, beautifully captured language, the patois that is spoken in Cape Town and celebrated working people without romanticising it, covering the hardship, but also the wisdom that is within so many of our communities. It was the fact that he was able to identify culture in a community that was not supposed to not have a culture,” explained Weeder.
“It was that, the quiet defiance of Alex La Guma in the way he was articulate and how he wasn’t beating a political drum despite all of his credentials.”
La Guma was born in District Six and attended Trafalgar High School. He joined Young Communists League in 1947 and the South African Communist Party in 1948. He was also the leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation (SACPO) and a defendant in the Treason Trial.
“How many of our people know about him? The city is silent about him. We have Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrated, and rightly so. Nelson Mandela is celebrated. He has a boulevard named after him; De Klerk and Helen Suzman too.
“But here we are, a citizen of our republic, who had represented the liberation movement in Cuba, was celebrated in the Soviet Union and all over. Universities have his work in their archives. And again, I say that the city is silent.”
Weeder advised caution in the way heroes are recognised but emphasised that someone like La Guma who had put on record life in Cape Town in its various forms must be remembered in a way that honours his literary works and his contribution to South Africa’s liberation from apartheid.
The District Six Museum supports the celebration of the legacy of La Guma as well as other liberation heroes who emerged from the community.
“We can argue that renaming streets and landmarks or creating memorials in Alex’s honour values his legacy, but the intention of the museum and the South African Friends of Cuba Society is to look at essay writing competitions, reprints of his books and rather creating an educational footprint that speaks to his literary and political legacy for South Africans,” said a statement issued on behalf of the museum.
The museum noted that the National Arts Council funded Dance of the La Gumas, a play commissioned by the museum and written by Basil Appollis and Sylvia Vollenhoven. It spoke to the legacy of both Blanche and Alex la Guma.
“This was a wonderful start to honouring both their legacies.”
“Alex’s legacy is his fiction,” said playwright and actor Basil Appollis.
“What grabbed me most was his descriptive powers. It’s like beautiful music that creeps up on you. You feel it and most importantly, you smell it. His elegance and style of writing makes him stand head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Yet as a nation we hardly know him.
“Through their dynamic love story I wanted to re introduce the La Gumas to South Africans who took the fight for justice to far flung corners of the globe. Apartheid left a hole in the heart of South African literature.
“Who was this literary genius who was driven from his home and country? Who won countless awards all over the world and who lies buried in the Heroes Acre of a Cuban cemetery? The subtitle of my play is ‘Revolution, Rumba and Romance’. That really sums up the play Dance of the La Gumas beautifully,” said Appollis.
Upon his visit to the diocese of the Anglican Church in the Caribbean, Weeder visited La Guma’s grave in the El Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón cemetery in Havana, Cuba, where he lies buried in the Heroes Acre, a courtyard dedicated to estrangeiros (foreigners) who made a remarkable contribution to Cuba.
Following this visit, Weeder wrote a poem, “If I was in Cuba today” in honour of the La Gumas.
Weeder pointed out that the La Gumas were a couple who fought together for South Africa’s liberation and both had to be celebrated.
