While La Guma believed in, and fought for, a democratic and non-racial South Africa, much of his writing had narrower concerns – the experiences of those defined as ‘coloured’. During the 1930s and 1940s, Jimmy wrote about the need for coloured writers. His son's later reflections on the origins of his father's own political and literary awareness stress the universality of proletarian class consciousness derived from models such as Robert Tressell and Jack London. School initiated a shift towards the world of his father, writing and politics. These new institutionalised settings required the young La Guma to channel his ‘libidinal instinctual energies’ in prescribed ways, and during this period he became aware of his ability to tell stories and to write. At least one of his father's contemporaries recalls that as a boy Alex ‘always had a pencil in his hand’ for writing or drawing. Wilhelmina had ensured that her children were baptised, but Jimmy wished to educate his children ‘in the spirit of materialism’. School fees for coloured primary pupils were abolished in 1928 and from 1930 coloured and white children could receive free education until their fifteenth year. This education was not compulsory, and the fact that La Guma continued beyond primary school and that his sister became a teacher suggests that his family placed a high value on education.