The South African writer and activist Alex La Guma (1925-85) departed Cape Town for exile in 1966, an extended period which ended with his premature death in Havana, Cuba, at the age of sixty. He never witnessed the achievement of non-racial democracy in the country of his birth. Yet his experience sheds light on the role that exile has had in shaping South Africa's literary, political, and intellectual life. La Guma shared this experience with many during the anti-apartheid struggle—thousands went abroad either temporarily or permanently—yet it remains incompletely examined as a historical phenomenon. Existing scholarship by Stephen Ellis, Hugh Macmillan and Thula Simpson, for example, has focused primarily on party organization, diplomatic efforts and life among lower-level recruits within the Frontline States and elsewhere. Though committed to this broader effort, La Guma's exile casts a different light on the complexity of this condition for individuals—the constant vulnerabilities of being a political émigré, the strength derived from common cause with other activists, and the day-to-day intellectual labor involved in building a transnational movement. Exile was a time of both political uncertainty and personal freedom, a liminal status of forcibly becoming an outsider while still retaining the commitments of an insider.