Conversation with Blanche La Guma in partnership with FOCUS

It was wonderful to receive Blanche La Guma at the District Six Museum Homecoming Centre on Saturday 7 April. The Museum partnered with Friends of Cuba (FOCUS) to host this conversation. Blanche had been the deputy to the ANC Special Representative to Cuba, Latin America and the Caribbean. Her role has often been overlooked because of the stronger awareness of her well-known husband, the great novelist Alex La Guma who was the Special Representative until his death in 1985.

It was a wonderful afternoon of reflective conversation, where Blanche displayed a strong awareness of being part of a larger movement, with her and Alex’s roles being interrelated and dependant on the roles others and made possible by them. It was great to hear about a life lived with dignity and agency in exile, not as an out-of-place refugee made to feel like a beggar using up the resources of a country which was not their birthplace.