Importants on Recycling

Ruth First

First, Ruth Heloise was born 4 May 1925, Johannesburg, South Africa.
She died 17 August 1982, Maputo, Mozambique. She was the daughter of Jewish immigrants Julius and Matilda First. Julius, a furniture manufacturer, was born in Latvia and came to South Africa in 1906 at the age of 10. Matilda came to South Africa from Lithuania when she was four years old. They were founder members of the Communist Party of South Africa. Ruth and her brother Ronald grew up in a household, in which intense political debate between people of all races and classes often took place. After matriculating from Jeppe High School for Girls, First studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, from 1942 to 1946. She graduated with a BA receiving firsts in sociology, anthropology, economic history and native administration. Her fellow students included Nelson Mandela, Eduardo Mondlane Mozambican freedom fighter and the first leader of FRELIMO, Joe Slovo, JN Singh executive member of both the Natal and South African Indian Congress, and Ismail Meer a former secretary-general of the South African Indian Congress. First helped found the Federation of Progressive Students and served as secretary to the Young Communist League, and was active in the Progressive Youth Council and, for a short while, the Johannesburg branch of the CPSA. In 1947 first worked, briefly, for the Johannesburg City Council, but left because she disagreed with the actions of the council. She then became the Johannesburg editor of a left-wing weekly newspaper. As a journalist she specialised in investigative reporting and her incisive articles about slave-like conditions on Bethal potato farms, the women's anti-pass campaign, migrant labour, bus boycotts and slum conditions remain among the finest pieces of social and labour journalism of the 1950s. Grown up in a politically conscious home, First's political involvement never abated. Apart from the activities already mentioned, she did support work for the 1946 mineworkers' strike, the Indian Passive Resistance campaign and protests neighboring the outlawing of communism in 1950. First was a Marxist. Ruth travelled to China, the Union Soviet Socialist Republic and countries in Africa, experiences that she documented and analyses. She was central to debates within the Johannesburg Discussion Club, which directed to the formation of the underground SACP and to closer links between the SACP and the African National Congress. 1949, First married Joe Slovo, a lawyer and labour organiser and, like her, a communist. Throughout the 1950s their home in Roosevelt Park was an important centre for multiracial political gatherings. They had three daughters: Shawn and Robyn. Frequent house searches and the exclusion and seizure of their parents by the police constantly unsettled their childhood. Her public profile and wide contacts first remained a private person. She had a brilliant intellect and did not suffer fools gladly. Her sharp criticism and her impatience with bluster earned her enemies and she was often feared in political debate. However, she was not dogmatic. First’s willingness to take up a position which she considered to be just, was not always welcomed within the ANC or SACP. Her bashfulness, her anxieties and vulnerabilities, but also her abundant generosity and love, were not seen by those who only knew her as confident and commanding in a public context. With friends she was warm and sensitive. She loved good and was an excellent cook. However, contradictions between her government and her role as a mother caused strains within her family, which are exposed in the later works of her daughters. 1953, First helped found the South African Congress of Democrats, the White wing of the Congress Union, and she took over as editor of Fighting Talk, a journal supporting the union. She was on the drafting committee of the Freedom Charter, but was unable to attend the Congress of the People at Kliptown in 1955 because of her banning order. In 1956, both First and Slovo were arrested and charged in the Treason Trial. The trial lasted four years, after which, all 156 accused were acquitted on 29 March 1961.

First considered this woman to be primarily a labour reporter, and during the 1950s she was making up to 15 stories a week. Even with this high work rate, her writing remained vivid, correct and often contentious. Her undercover journalism was the basis of her longer guides and, later, her books. The transition to more compound writing came easily. Banning and exile did not suffocate First's activism, but encouraged a qualitative change—from political journalism to activist scholar. Her first major monograph, a study of South Africa's continuing illegal domination of South West Africa, researched while under police surveillance in 1961, was widely acclaimed and remains a classic. Despite banning orders First edited ANC members' speeches and trial addresses and was instrumental in the publication of Mbeki's South Africa: The Peasants Revolt and Mandela's No Easy Walk to Freedom. In 1970, with the publication of Power in Africa, she won international recognition as a key African analyst. She became a lecturer at the University of Durham and during the 1970s combined scholarship, a sharp critical eye, and firm political commitment to author and co-author many important works on South African apartheid, African politics, and an outstanding biography of Olive Schreiner.

In 1977 First seized the opportunity to return to southern Africa as director of research at the Center for African Studies in Mozambique. Free from the constraints of banning orders and the frustration of exile, First flourished under the demanding task of training Mozambican cadres to develop appropriate, useful, and politically informed research techniques in an effort to stabilize the fledgling socialist state. She turned her talents as teacher, activist, strategist, and scholar to strengthen and sharpen the struggle for social justice.

First was never a politician, yet she was a towering force in political circles—the all-important behind-the-scenes policymaker, the gifted problem solver who never left a stone unturned, a question unasked, or a bold edge untried. A creative and influential writer, First left an important legacy of political analysis of modern Africa, and her work in Mozambique set the international pace for integrating social science research into the creation of communism. She was at a high spot in her life's work when she was cut down in 1982. selection of her writing and an important bibliography of her printed works, including reviews of her works, news reports of her murder, and obituaries, collected by Gavin Williams, is contained in "A Tribute to Ruth First," Review of African Political Economy, Volume 25 The student's best introduction to Ruth First is 117 Days (1965), her account of solitary confinement under the Verwoerd regime in South Africa. The book was re-issued after her death with a foreword by her life-long friend Ronald Segal.