The Early Writings of Alex La Guma: Reflections on Culture, Identity and Freedom in the 1950s, edited by Prof André Odendaal and Dr Roger Field as part of the African Lives Series. Image: Supplied

Some book launches are orderly affairs, measured by programmes and speeches. This one was different. It unfolded as an act of remembrance, testimony and recommitment - to literature, to struggle history, and to the unfinished work of intellectual justice. 

At the University of the Western Cape (UWC), the launch of The Early Writings of Alex La Guma became a collective reckoning with a writer whose words continue to shape how South Africans understand power, place and freedom.

Hosted by UWC’s Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the Iyatsiba Lab in Woodstock, the event celebrated the publication of The Early Writings of Alex La Guma: Reflections on Culture, Identity and Freedom in the 1950s. The volume was edited by Professor André Odendaal, UWC’s Vice-Chancellor’s Writer-in-Residence, together with literary scholar Dr Roger Field, and published as part of the African Lives Series in collaboration with HSRC Press. The evening also marked the 10th anniversary of the African Lives Series, a milestone in the recovery and restoration of African intellectual traditions.

Alex La Guma: Writer, Witness, Revolutionary

Born in District Six in 1925, Alex La Guma emerged as one of South Africa’s most important literary and political figures of the twentieth century. A novelist, journalist and anti-apartheid activist, La Guma was drawn early into the politics of resistance, becoming a member of the South African Communist Party and later serving the African National Congress (ANC) in exile. His fiction, including A Walk in the Night, And a Threefold Cord, and, In the Fog of the Seasons’ End, placed the quotidian realities of oppression at its centre — police violence, poverty, racialised space and moral struggle — rendered with striking empathy and social realism.

Yet, La Guma’s early journalism and short prose, much of it published in the 1950s in newspapers like New Age, had largely fallen out of circulation. These writings, often produced under censorship and surveillance, captured everyday life in townships and inner-city Cape Town while sharpening a political consciousness that would later define his novels. The new volume restores these texts to public view, allowing readers to trace “the making of a writer” alongside the making of a political thinker.

“A Celebration of Being Together”

Opening the evening, Prof Odendaal reflected on the importance of marking the publication collectively rather than quietly allowing the book to enter the world.

“It’s a tough time for books, and a tough time for public discourse,” he said. “But I felt the need to celebrate a book coming out in an old-fashioned way — with friends, colleagues, conversations, and reflection on what Alex La Guma was saying.”

Dr Roger Field, La Guma’s co-editor, was acknowledged for his role in contextualising the literary dimensions of the early writings. Prof Odendaal thanked Dr Field for returning to UWC in spirit and presence, noting that the collaboration bridged scholarship, memory and long-standing intellectual relationships forged during the struggle years.

UWC Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Robert Balfour, situated the evening within the University’s longer history of intellectual resistance. Reflecting on his own first encounters with La Guma’s work, Prof Balfour described the author’s writing as both deeply humane and politically incisive.

“I remember reading A Walk in the Night as a young reader and being struck by the depth of empathy and the clarity of prose,” he said. “It was not just beautiful writing — it revealed the intersections of class, race and gender in ways that were profoundly moving.”

Prof Balfour emphasised that La Guma’s early writings blurred the boundaries between journalism and fiction, capturing everyday life under apartheid while articulating sharply political truths.

“This collection gives us insight into the making of a writer,” he noted. “It reveals the social and political worlds that informed his later fiction — worlds shaped by hardship, systemic oppression and extraordinary resilience.”

He also underscored the significance of the African Lives Series as an archival and intellectual project.

“Many African intellectual traditions remain scattered, unpublished, or difficult to access,” Prof Balfour said. “This series works to recover those materials so they become part of a more inclusive record of South African intellectual life. It is a form of scholarly stewardship.”

La Guma’s Afterlives

The evening also featured literary reflections and readings that linked La Guma’s work to questions of belonging, non-racialism and global black intellectual history. Speakers reflected on La Guma’s later years in Cuba, where he served as the ANC’s representative and where he died in 1985. His burial in Havana, they argued, symbolised a life shaped by transnational solidarities forged through exile, anti-colonial struggle and shared histories of slavery.

Throughout the event, La Guma emerged not as a static literary icon, but as a living presence and a writer whose words still speak to contemporary struggles over urban inequality, language, identity and freedom.

The launch of The Early Writings of Alex La Guma affirmed UWC’s role as a custodian of critical memory and engaged scholarship. More than a book launch, the event became a reminder that literature is not only about the past — it is a resource for imagining more just futures.