Born in Cape Province, South Africa, in 1925, Alex La Guma belonged to a working- class family in the “coloured”—or mixed race—sector of society. His mother, Wilhemina Alexander, and his father, James La Guma, were a cigarette factory worker and a trade union organizer, respectively. Following in the footsteps of his father, who was himself a leading figure in the black liberation movement, Alex became a member of the Cape Town district Communist party and participated in the drafting of the 1956 Freedom Charter. He would remain involved throughout his life in the struggle for racial equality in his homeland. La Guma played an active role in the Franchise Action Council, which opposed the attempt to disfranchise the coloured population; his own house served as headquarters to the South African Coloured People’s Organization. After being placed under house arrest in 1962 because of his writing for New Age, a progressive newspaper, he and his wife spent the following years alternating between house arrest and imprisonment under various charges until they left the country for Britain in 1967. A Walk in the Night, La Guma’s first book, was his attempt to promote Western awareness of the living conditions in his homeland, particularly in the coloured neighborhood of Cape Town’s District Six.
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