SOURCE: JanMohamed, Abdul R. “Alex La Guma: The Literary and Political Functions of Marginality in the Colonial Situation.” Boundary 2 11, nos. 1-2 (fall-winter 1982-83): 271-90.

In the following essay, JanMohamed examines the ways in which La Guma's fiction reflects the socioeconomic and spiritual effects of colonialism on native peoples.

The life and fiction of Alex La Guma perfectly illustrate the predicament of non-whites in South Africa and the effects of apartheid on them. His formative years were spent in a society that is still colonial and characterizes the black man as the incarnation of evil and the continent as the “heart of darkness.” Fanon's description of such a society has still not been superseded:

The colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say with help of the army and the police force, the place of the native...