Alex La Guma's A Walk in the Night

Alex La Guma's short novel, A Walk in the Night, is a fascinating read on Cape Town's colored District 6, early 1960s apartheid, and the destructive impact of racism and hatred on human society. Instead of writing a formal analysis or review, I shall dsecribe interesting aspects of La Guma's novel, featuring the unnecessary and immoral murder of a colored youth with kinky hair, white supremacy, the cosmopolitan world of Cape Town, and apartheid's negative effects on society, essentially driving violence and murder.

Cape Town's District 6, prior to it's forced evacuation of the "Colored" population under apartheid rule, which has been discussed in previous blog posts about "Mannenberg" or "Cape Town Fringe" by Abdullah Ibrahim, is the setting for the story. Though a "Colored" district where only mixed-race people are supposed to reside, an alcoholic and out of work Irish actor lives in a tenement with several impoverished Coloreds. District 6 also houses shebeens, restaurants (some owned by Indians or other Europeans, such as the Portuguese) and hosts international guests of color. In fact, Puerto Rican shipworkers from the US almost get in a brawl with Colored gangster-wannabes. In addition to European, Indian, and American workers seeking cheap thrills through South African prostitutes and bars, the white police officers possess a permanent volatile presence in the District. Though despised, Constable Raalt and his driver cruise around, harassing store owners and pedestrians, often out of rage at personal problems as well as their hatred for "hotnots," exacerbating relations between white and Colored South Africans under apartheid. Since the apartheid state required strict segregation of the races, pass laws, and white supervision and curtailment of non-white movement, the white police in District 6 operate like an occupying force, similar to their present role in many US African-American or Latino urban communities.

Cape Town, city of beauty and center of the Colored population, is important in terms of race relations because Coloreds outnumbered Black South Africans in this time. Indeed, the population of Cape Town is still mostly "Colored," yet in this novel, the "Colored" seem to be racialized as "black." Perhaps this varies with skin color and physical features, so that the kinky-haired Willieboy becomes a "hotnot," but one of the police officers refers to all the "Coloreds" as "hotnots," derived from "Hottentot," which refers to the indigenous peoples of the region, the Khoikhoi. Thus, distinctions between Black and Colored South Africans are not as apparent in this novel, perhaps due to the simple fact of a small Black population in Cape Town in the early 1960s, or because of the broadened definition of "black" during the anti-apartheid movement to foster unified resistance among the non-white populace. La Guma also came from a Communist Colored background, perhaps also impacting his racial identification with the Black majority in an effort to overturn centuries of division and self-hatred for the African heritage of South Africa's Colored. However, this was years before Black Consciousness, so perhaps I am reading too much into this. The professor of the course I was required to read this for definitely presented this way, though, describing everyone as "black" despite the differences in South Africa's racial structure.

The novel links the infidelity, racism, segregation, and labor exploitation. Michael Adonis, the character who murders the Irishman, is fired from his job by a white overseer, thereby turning his heart to hate of all whites. However, the exploitation and expropriation of Colored labor is another inherent part of apartheid's longevity. Though Black South African miners, domestics, and others are not present in the novel, the Marxist themes of exploitation of workers are present in Michael Adonis being terminated from his work, complete white control of the economy, and the lives of the numerous members of the community of the novel. The married couple living in the same building as are struggling to live while the mother becomes pregnant, representing hope for the future, nevertheless live a life of material poverty despite the laboriousness of the family. Likewise, Willieboy's life under an abusive father or the homeless acquaintance of Adonis, provide clear evidence of an underpaid, exploited, abused, subject people whose community is reduced to patron-client relations with whites, substandard housing, and crime. The excessive policing, more reminiscent of slave paddyrollers than any sense of protection or justice, exemplify the ruthlessness of apartheid and racial hatred within a broader system of capitalism.

However, hope for the future remains, despite the wrongful death of Willieboy and the ongoing existence of apartheid. La Guma ends with the following, "Franky Lorenzo slept on his back and snored peacefully. Beside him the woman, Grace, lay awake in the dark, restlessly waiting for the dawn and feeling the knot of life within her." Amazingly, La Guma ends on an optimistic note, despite Willieboy's death and Michael Adonis giving in to hate.