Struggle stalwart Blanche La Guma has passed away peacefully at the age of 96.
The widow of writer and prominent Communist Party of SA, later renamed the SACP activist, Alex La Guma, she died on Thursday.
The couple had two children, Eugene and Bartholomew.
An excerpt from her biography on South African History Online reads: “In 1957, in response to the Nursing Act (No. 69) of that year, Blanche organised a demonstration of 300 nurses. She was detained under the 90-day solitary confinement laws in 1963 and subsequently banned.
“She and Alex subsequently moved to Cuba, where he acted as the ANC representative for the Caribbean. In 1985 Alex died and Blanche returned to London. In 1992 she returned to Cape Town.”
A poem in tribute to La Guma by Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of St George the Martyr, Michael Weeder, reads:
IF I WAS IN CUBA TODAY
(for Blanche La Guma, with affection)
If I was in Cuba today
you would find me at
the Cementerio de Cristóbal Colónat
at the grave of Alex la Guma,
our District Six Dostoevsky.
I will sing: “da garie padtjie narie kramat toe.”
A coconut shell slanging a goema riddim,
You will catch the tune and sing with me,
as I libate the ground with a tot of buchu-brandy,
cigar smoke infused with a sniff of Jamaican sunshine,
the non-majat, forgotten familiar of home.
If I was in Cuba today
we will slow salsa under a Carib moon
keening low, like old lovers, do. We will sing
about “jou matras en my kombers” like
Blanche and Alex would once have sung:
their eyes on the waters of the Playas del Este
their hearts blissed by the wind breezing down
the moonlit lanes beyond Roger Street, across
the Parade to the bay of their sighed longing.
I will stand in gratitude at your grave, Uncle Alex,
in Havana today, and to say that we have
not forgotten you and your words
that led us through the fog and beyond
the night of draconian ghosts
to where we walk the days of freedom.
© Michael Weeder
Cape Times