Abstract
For a variety of reasons (including its publication history), Alex la Guma’s second novel And a Threefold Cord (1964) has long been neglected by readers and critics. This essay seeks to redress this situation by offering a reading of the novel that demonstrates its artistic integrity. Like A Walk in the Night, And a Threefold Cord avoids the overt propagandizing that arguably mars La Guma’s later work. The political “message” of the text is shown to emerge organically from events that unfold in its presented world. And a Threefold Cord is set in a Cape Flats shantytown, and it analyses the predicament of the shanty dwellers in terms of class inequality and economic exploitation, rather than in terms of racial discrimination. This ensures the novel’s continuing relevance in a South Africa where far too many people are inadequately housed in ever-growing “informal settlements”.
Highlights
As the apartheid years recede ever further into the past, a reasonably objective stocktaking of the South African literary achievement of those years becomes increasingly feasible and perhaps necessary
One writer whose work is in my view indubitably substantial enough to lead an independent existence in this post-apartheid era is the late Alex La Guma
The purpose of this essay is tointroduce to an influential section of the South African reading public the one La Guma novel missing from this list: And a Threefold Cord
Summary
As the apartheid years recede ever further into the past, a reasonably objective stocktaking of the South African literary achievement of those years becomes increasingly feasible and perhaps necessary. This is especially true with regard to the work most closely tied to its immediate social and political context: the overtly “committed” writing generally known as “protest literature”. One writer whose work is in my view indubitably substantial enough to lead an independent existence in this post-apartheid era is the late Alex La Guma. The purpose of this essay is to (re-)introduce to an influential section of the South African reading public the one La Guma novel missing from this list: And a Threefold Cord
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