The following, slightly edited (and sans embedded links), is from the Wikipedia entry on Ruth First (4 May 1925 – 17 August 1982), a South African anti-apartheid activist, journalist and scholar. She was assassinated on this date in 1982 with a parcel bomb built by the South African police while working in Mozambique. (I put together the list of her books at the end of the entry.)
“Ruth First’s Jewish parents, Julius First and Matilda Levetan, emigrated to South Africa from Latvia in 1906 and became founding members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), the forerunner of the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ruth First was born in 1925 and brought up in Johannesburg. Like her parents, she joined the Communist Party, which was allied with the African National Congress [ANC] in its struggle to overthrow the South African government.
As a teenager, First attended Jeppe High School for Girls and then became the first person in her family to attend university. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946. While she was at university she found that ‘on a South African campus, the student issues that matter are national issues.’ She was involved in the founding of the Federation of Progressive Students, also known as the Progressive Students League, and got to know, among other fellow students, Nelson Mandela, future President of South Africa, and Eduardo Mondlane, the first leader of the Mozambique freedom movement FRELIMO [Mozambique Liberation Front, from the Portuguese Frente de Libertação de Moçambique. Founded in 1962, FRELIMO began as a nationalist movement fighting for the independence of the Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique].
After graduating, Ruth First worked as a research assistant for the Social Welfare Division of the Johannesburg City Council. In 1946, her position in the Communist Party [she ‘was not a Stalinist’] was boosted significantly after a series of mine strikes during which leading members of the Party were arrested. First then became the editor-in-chief of the radical newspaper The Guardian [1947-1963], which was subsequently banned by the state. Through investigative journalism, Ruth exposed the racial segregation policies known as apartheid, targeting black South Africans following the rise of the National Party in 1948. In 1949 she married Joe Slovo, a South African anti-apartheid activist and Communist, with whom she had three daughters, Shawn, Gillian and Robyn. Together, Slovo and First became a leading force in the 1950s protest era in which the government outlawed any movements that opposed their policies.
In addition to her work with The Guardian and its successors, the South African Congress of Democrats (COD), a white-only wing of the Congress Alliance, was founded in 1953 with support from Ruth. In 1955 Ruth First assumed the position of editor of a radical political journal called Fighting Talk. However, journalism was not the only outlet for her political activism against apartheid. First and her husband Slovo were also members of the African National Congress [ANC], in addition to the Communist Party, [indeed, they exemplified the SACP-ANC alliance]. She also played an active role during the extensive riots of the 1950s.
Ruth First was one of the defendants in the Treason Trial of 1956-1961, alongside 156 other leading anti-apartheid activists who were key figures in the Congress Alliance. First’s early work and writings were largely used as evidence to prove treason on behalf of the Congress Alliance. Following four years of harassment by the state, Ruth alongside the 155 other activists were all acquitted of their charges. After the state of emergency that followed the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 she was listed and banned. She could not attend meetings or publish, and she could not be quoted. In 1963, during another government crackdown, she was imprisoned and held in isolation without charge for 117 days under the Ninety-Day Detention Law. She was the first white woman to be detained under this law. First’s book, 117 Days, is her account of her arrest, imprisonment and interrogation by the South African Police Special Branch in 1963. It was first published in 1965. The memoir provides a detailed account of how she endured ‘isolation and sensory deprivation’ while withstanding ‘pressure to provide information about her comrades to the Special Branch.’
In March 1964, First went into exile in London, where she became active in the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. She was a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester in 1972, and between 1973 and 1978 she lectured in development studies at the University of Durham. She also spent periods on secondment at universities in Dar es Salaam and Lourenço Marques (Maputo).
In November 1978, First took up the post of director of research at the Centre of African Studies (Centro de Estudos Africanos), Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique. She was assassinated by order of Craig Williamson, a major in the South African Police, on 17 August 1982, when she opened a parcel bomb that had been sent to the university. Bridget O’Laughlin, an anthropologist working with First, was in First’s office when she was murdered, and testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Her daughter, the writer Gillian Slovo, published her own memoir, Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country, in 1997. It is an account of her childhood in South Africa and her relationship with her activist parents.”
Books by Ruth First
- South West Africa (Penguin, 1963).
- 117 Days: An account of confinement and interrogation under the South African Ninety-Day Detention Law (Penguin 1965 [Bloomsbury, 1988 and Little, Brown, 2010]).
- (with R. Segal) South West Africa: A Travesty of Trust (Deutsch, 1967).
- The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’etat in Africa. (Allen Lane, 1970).
- Portugal’s Wars in Africa (Christian Action, 1971).
- (co-edited with Jonathan Steele and Christabel Gurney) The South African Connection: Western Investment in Apartheid (Maurice Temple Smith, 1972).
- Libya: The Elusive Revolution (Penguin, 1974/African Publishing Co., 1975).
- (with Ann Scott) Olive Schreiner (Deutsch/The Women’s Press, 1980/Rutgers University Press, 1990).
- The Mozambican Miner: Proletarian and Peasant (Harvester, 1983).
See too The Ruth First Papers
Relevant Bibliography: South African Liberation Struggles
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