SOURCE: Chandramohan, Balasubramanyam. “The Coloureds of Cape Town.” In A Study in Trans-Ethnicity in Modern South Africa: The Writings of Alex La Guma, 1925-1985, pp. 52-105. Lampeter, Wales: Mellen Research University Press, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Chandramohan explores La Guma's portrayal of black South Africans.

One of the aims that La Guma had in taking up creative writing was to fill the gap that he felt existed in the portrayal of the Coloured community in South African literature.¹ The gap arose as a result of the preoccupation of South African writers with the events of the expanding frontier of the Cape Colony which was dominated by the White-African military and cultural conflict. The preceding conflict, the Khoisan resistance to White inroads into their territories though heroic, Shula Marks demonstrated,² was less bloody and lasted for less time as compared with the White African conflict. Consequently, the interest in...