This study undertakes an analysis of the models of response (resistance non-agency) to colonial
apartheid and post-colonial imposition which are posited in the novels of the Kenyan author
Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the South African writer Alex La Guma. Such a focus involves related
issues such as the relationship between the consciousness level of the subaltern and his her
capacity for resistance and how oppression affects self-construction and consciousness. Since
the book deals with resistance and consciousness within the textual space of the novels the
central issue raised in the study is explored around questions of representation. The study
places the texts in the historical and political context of colonial and post-colonial Kenya
and apartheid South Africa. The study analyses the development of the two authors' literary
careers and distinguishes between two phases in the two authors' fiction viz. their
«counter-hegemonic» and their «combat» fiction. While the counter-hegemonic fiction resists
essentialist representation of subaltern consciousness and rejects an essentialist view of
resistance as an obvious non-contradictory act the study claims that their combat literature
is a more direct uncompromising and often one-dimensional reaction and struggle against the
oppressor.
