Jimmy La Guma

The life and works of South African writer, political activist and artist, from his early life in District Six, his arrest and trial for treason, to his eventual reluctant exile in Cuba.

This series honours the lives of Southern African leaders who helped shape the history of the region. The books include activities for exploration in the classroom. James grew up as an orphan who had to leave school at an early age to begin working, yet he became one of South Africa's most respected advocates of democracy, an independent thinker and tireless fighter for justice.

In the Dark with my dress on fire is the remarkable life story of Blanche La Guma, a South African woman who dedicated her life to ending apartheid through her various roles as professional nurse, wife and mother, and underground Communist activist.

The presence of Africans in the German Democratic Republic is very rarely thought of in connection with the experience of exile. Instead, Africans in the GDR are predominantly viewed through the prism of educational and labor migration. While such research has undoubtedly produced valuable insights, it often fails to adequately account for the implicit Eurocentrism, methodological nationalism, and anti-communist bias inherent in Western knowledge production. This study offers a different approach. Through biographical portrayal, it unfolds the life stories of African freedom fighters who lived in exile in the GDR and, ultimately, remained in reunified Germany, with the main case study being a Malawian activist who was expelled from East to West Berlin. Recounting his experiences along with those of some South African exiles, chief among them a former medical worker for the ANC’s armed wing, the study ethnographically reconstructs the multiple entanglements between the “Second” and “Third” worlds from the vantage point of the politically displaced within the concrete historical contexts of African decolonization, the struggle against the Malawian Banda dictatorship, and the struggle against South African apartheid.

A literary biography of one of South Africa's most extraordinary and eminent men of letters, Justine Alexander La Guma, better known as Alex La Guma. Concerned with the writing life of one of South Africa's most prolific, eloquent and courageous authors, it covers his contribution in the fight to overturn apartheid as well as his literary work and journalism.

In April 1955, twenty-nine countries from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East came together for a diplomatic conference in Bandung, Indonesia, intending to define the direction of the postcolonial world. Representing approximately two-thirds of the world’s population, the Bandung conference occurred during a key moment of transition in the mid-twentieth century—amid the global wave of decolonization that took place after the Second World War and the nascent establishment of a new cold war world order in its wake. Participants such as Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Zhou Enlai of China, and Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia seized this occasion to attempt the creation of a political alternative to the dual threats of Western neocolonialism and the cold war interventionism of the United States and the Soviet Union. The essays in this volume explore the diverse repercussions of this event, tracing the diplomatic, intellectual, and sociocultural histories that have emanated from it. Making a World after Empire consequently addresses the complex intersection of postcolonial history and cold war history and speaks to contemporary discussions of Afro-Asianism, empire, and decolonization, thus reestablishing the conference’s importance in twentieth-century global history. Contributors: Michael Adas, Laura Bier, James R. Brennan, G. Thomas Burgess, Antoinette Burton, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Julian Go, Christopher J. Lee, Jamie Monson, Jeremy Prestholdt, Denis M. Tull