Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A man in an ordinary cloth cap’
- 2 ‘Brown Sons of Africa’
- 3 ‘The honey of a satirical philosophy’
- 4 ‘This is the time for practical politics’
- 5 ‘Maybe he thought it was a disgrace too’
- 6 ‘The clouds pregnant with moisture’
- 7 ‘Well, I'll just start again, won't I’
- 8 ‘You had to be contented with history’
- 9 ‘Y eso, lo tenemos aquí en Cuba!’
- 10 Coming Home
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - ‘You had to be contented with history’
In the Fog of the Seasons' End & Cold War politics of culture & identity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A man in an ordinary cloth cap’
- 2 ‘Brown Sons of Africa’
- 3 ‘The honey of a satirical philosophy’
- 4 ‘This is the time for practical politics’
- 5 ‘Maybe he thought it was a disgrace too’
- 6 ‘The clouds pregnant with moisture’
- 7 ‘Well, I'll just start again, won't I’
- 8 ‘You had to be contented with history’
- 9 ‘Y eso, lo tenemos aquí en Cuba!’
- 10 Coming Home
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In South Africa's post-liberation phase writers and critics are no longer called upon, as Rita Barnard notes, to ‘sing the collective subject into existence as it assumes its place in history’. This chapter considers some of the conditions under which La Guma and others constituted that subjectivity between the late 1960s and the early 1970s. As editor and novelist, La Guma was responsible for two publications in 1972: the novel In the Fog of the Seasons' End and Apartheid: A Collection of Writings on South African Racism by South Africans. La Guma wrote that it had been compiled in response to the incredulity he encountered when speaking about apartheid at meetings in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It also explains and affirms the Morogoro Conference resolutions, and towards the end of his life La Guma would remind his audiences of them. La Guma's only registered contribution to this work is the Introduction. Shortly after his arrival in Britain, La Guma began working at the Transcription Centre. This was the conclusion to correspondence with the Centre started in Cape Town. Initially set up to produce literary and cultural programmes on Africa, Caribbean artists, literary figures and intellectuals which it sold to radio stations in Africa and the Caribbean, and later in Germany, Denmark, India and Singapore, its scope broadened to include television films, stage and radio plays, music recordings and art exhibitions, making it ‘something of an informal club for all black artists visiting London and a power house for many of their activities’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Alex la GumaA Literary and Political Biography, pp. 164 - 193Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010