During the early 1960s, the National Party set out to destroy all organisations outside parliament that posed a serious threat to its policies. In 1963, it passed legislation that empowered police to arrest without charge, detain and interrogate for 90 days anyone regarded as a threat to the state, and September of that year saw the first officially acknowledged death of a 90-day detainee. Already confined to the magisterial districts of Cape Town and Wynberg, in December 1962 La Guma was placed under twenty-four hour house arrest for five years. This, along with police raids, detention without trial and banning placed him and his family under considerable emotional pressure, yet in literary terms the early 1960s was one of his most productive periods – hence this chapter's short time frame. By May 1964, La Guma had written 13 short stories, a biography of his father and was anticipating the publication of And a Threefold Cord. Banning restrictions, however, forced him to shelve plans for a history of coloured politics. This was also when the first clear signs of John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway's influence on his style and subject matter emerged.