La Guma, Alex(ander) (1925–1985)

South African novelist. A black writer who was actively involved in political opposition to apartheid, La Guma was one of South Africa's most sophisticated writers in the black protest tradition. Many of his novels, including A Walk in the Night (1962) and In the Fog of the Seasons' End (1972), sought to analyse apartheid South Africa in terms of class rather than race, and debated whether apartheid should be opposed by political agitation or armed struggle.

La Guma joined the South African Communist Party in 1948, two years before the party was outlawed by the government, and in 1954 became chairman of the anti-apartheid South African Coloured People's Organization. Although acquitted in the Treason Trial of 1956–60, he was placed under house arrest from late 1962 until he left South Africa in 1966. After working as a journalist in London, England, he was chief representative of the African National Congress (ANC) in the Caribbean, based in Cuba, from 1978 until his death.

Other novels include And a Threefold Cord (1964), The Stone Country (1967) and Time of the Butcherbird (1979). La Guma also published the travel book A Soviet Journey (1978).