FROM VAGRANCY TO CONCERTED ACTION: PROGRESSIVE COMMITMENT IN THREE NOVELS OF ALEX LA GUM A +

EBELEO. EKO (MRS)

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EBELEO. EKO (MRS)

Abstract

What a waste; here they got us fighting each other like dog. (The Stone Country, p. 74) The above statement of awareness marks a turning point in the history of all oppressed peoples. It is made at the moment of truth because as long as the victimizer can prevent his victims from uniting, as long as he can keep them fighting each other, so long will he succeed in keeping them down. Ignorance, poverty, distrust, artificial divisions — all these are weapons for maintaining status quo in any colonial or apartheid situation as in South Africa. The growth of political awareness and commitment to freedom among the masses invariable comes through the efforts and sacrifices of very few enlightened individuals. Among them are many writers. This is true of Angola, of Mozambique, of Zimbabwe and of South Africa. The later has been blessed with a fairly large number of writers, very much commit-ted to the spread of the ideology of justice and freedom. Alex La Guma has made Significant contributions in spreading that ideology. In the sequence of his four novels (A Walk in the Night and a Three-fold Cord, The Stone Country and in the Fog of the Seasons' End), he depicts journey into greater political aware-ness and Commitment in what a critic describes as his native talent: "The powerful construction and flowing movement of his depictions... producing works which themselves have an inner dynamic flow.1

References

FOOTNOTES

Novels by Alex La Guma

A Walk in the Night, first published 1962, African Writers Series, 1977 edition. The Stone Country, first published 1967, African Writers Series, 1974 edition.

In the Fog of the Seasons' End, first published 1972, African Writers Series, 1972 edition.

All quotations from the above three novels are from the African Writers Series Editions herein indicated.

Wilfred Cartey/ Whispers from a Continent (New York: Vintage Books, 1969, pp. 112-113.

Lewis Nkosi, "Fiction by Black South Africans", Introduction to African Literature, ed. Dili Beier' (Illinois: Northewester University Press 1967) p.212.

J.M. Coetzee, "Alex La Guma and the Responsibilities of the South African Writers New African Literature and the Arts,

Vol. Ill, ed. Joseph Okpaku (New York: The Third World Press, 1973), pp.116-124.

Ime Ikeddeh, "Ngugi Wa Thiong'O': The Novelist as a Historian" A Celebration of Black and African Writing, eds. Bruce King and K Ogungbesan (Ahmadu Bello University Press and Oxford University Press 1975), p.204.

Austin J. Shelton, ed. The African Assertion (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1968), p.253.

Per Wastberg, ed., The Writer in Modern Africa (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1967, p.22.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act. 1, Scene V.

"The African Personality in the African Novel," Introduction ot African Literature, p.219.

Meja Nwangi, Carcase for Hounds. This story of Mau Mau struggle against white settlers and oppressors of Kenya people is rich in patriotic sacrifices both by the forest fighters and the villagers as well. There is by and larqe a unity of purpose among them.

Coetzee, p. 121.

Sembane Ousmane, God's Bits of Wood, first published in 1960. The crowd 3 hero in this novel because the workers are politically aware and together with their wives and children, present a solid front. The success of their strike for better wages and benefits called for everybody's sacrifice.

African Writers Talking, Dennis Duerden and Cosmo Pietorse, eds. New York: Africans Publishing Co., (1972) p.93 13

"The Protest Tradition", Protest and Conflict in African Literature, Cosmo Pieterse and Donald Munro, eds. (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1972), p,93

From Martyrs by Conte Saidon Tidiany (Guinea)

Vilakazi from Zulul-Horisons — the Vilakazi poems rendered into English by D.M. Malcolm and Florence I. Friedman (London: Bailey Bros and Swinfen 1962), p. 178.

Cartey, p.120.

"The Writer in a Modern State", The Writer in Modern Africa, Wastberg, ed. (Upsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1968), p.20.

FROM VAGRANCY TO CONCERTED ACTION: PROGRESSIVE COMMITMENT IN THREE NOVELS OF ALEX LA GUM A +

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