This article on South African revolutionary Ruth First was first published in The Southern African Review of Education. Please excuse the formatting blips.
Abstract
When South Africans think about Ruth First or her husband, Joe
Slovo, the knowledge is always
connected to the struggle against
apartheid. Ruth is too often remembered because she was
assassinated by the apartheid regime. Scholars and comrades, of course, have a broader
and more complex
view of their lives. She was a journalist and editor of the
Johannesburg office of the many reincarnations of The Guardian between 1946 and her forced exile in 1964.
She had more ideological breadth than her South African Communist Party
comrades and was viewed by some as a ‘new leftist’ in the mid-sixties. She published numerous books
and was the Director of Research of
the Centro de Estudios Africanos (CEA) at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo when she was killed by a letter
bomb at the hands
of the South African government in 1982. But Ruth First was also an educator –
a teacher and scholar who had a great effect on colleagues,
comrades and students. While this part of Ruth’s life and work is seldom
discussed, there is irony in that her posthumous honours are from
educational institutions. This article attempts to chronologically describe
and analyse Ruth First’s work as a teacher and mentor – a
mission that was always grounded in the struggle against apartheid and social
justice throughout the world. Both her formal and informal teaching experiences
are the stuff of this article.
When South Africans
think about Ruth First or her husband,
Joe Slovo, it is usually
to identify them with the struggle against apartheid. While Joe is most
often remem- bered as one of the Communist leaders of the armed struggle, or
for his promotion of the ‘sunset clauses’
in the negotiations between the African National
Congress (ANC) and the
National Party that culminated in the end of apartheid, Ruth is too often
remembered as a victim of the Struggle
because she was assassinated by the apartheid
regime. Scholars and comrades, of course, have a broader and
more complex view of their lives. Joe was a lawyer and then one of the leaders
of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, in Angola, Zambia and
Mozambique. He also became the Minister of Housing in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet
before dying from cancer in 1995.
Ruth was a journalist and editor of the Johannesburg office of
the many reincar- nations of The Guardian between 1946 and her forced exile in 1964. She had more ideological breadth than many of her
Communist Party of South African (CPSA) comrades and was viewed by some as a
‘new leftist’ in the mid-sixties. She published numerous books and was the
Director of Research of the Centre of African Studies (CEA) at Eduardo Mondlane
University in Maputo when she was killed by a letter bomb at the hands of agents of the South African
government in 1982. But Ruth First
was also an educator – a teacher and mentor who had a great impact on
colleagues, comrades and students. While this part of Ruth’s life and work has
seldom been dis- cussed, its significance has been demonstrated by the award of numerous
posthumous honours from educational institutions. First’s role as a writer and scholar
has received considerable
attention, but this article will
concentrate on her role as a teacher and mentor. It is important to note,
however, that Ruth’s teaching and writing were always grounded in the struggle
against apartheid and social justice throughout Africa.
High
school and youth politics
Ruth First was born in Johannesburg in 1925. At a very young age, her mother,
Tilly First, introduced her to books and emphasised the importance of
socialist politics. Even as a high school student, it appears that Ruth First took on the role of teacher
to her fellow students. Myrtle Berman, a lifelong friend, who was one of
the founders of the Armed Resistance Movement (ARM) in the late fifties, remembers Ruth being well ahead of their classmates in her
knowledge of politics, particularly focusing on the Soviet Union, and the
nature of oppression and racism in South Africa. According to Berman, Ruth
First did not hesitate in instructing her peers as a student at Jeppe Girls High School. When Ruth was 14 years
old she joined
the Junior Left Book Club,
a group that met weekly to discuss political books they had all read,
sing socialist songs and report to the group on research
they were assigned to do on issues of racism and oppression in South Africa and
throughout the world (Berman 2010). Ruth read and discussed politics in South
Africa and the Soviet Union with her parents, was quite vocal at Junior Left
Book Club meetings and easily won debates with her comrades.
One other event
that occurred at the end of Ruth First’s high school years
foreshadows her becoming both an informal and formal educator later in
life. At this young age, Ruth gave a speech on the steps
of the Johannesburg City Hall,
where her parents
had taken her to political meetings from the time
of her childhood. Her brother
described listening to her speech. ‘What
made a great impression on me was the first
time I ever heard her speak
on the steps of the city hall in Johannesburg. And she was young, she
was a brilliant orator’ (First 2011).
According to her close adult
friend, the late Ros De Lanerolle, when Ruth told of these
events some 30 years after
the event, her memories
were not of an extraordinary accomplishment, but rather
of her mother’s criticism (De Lanerolle ND). What is clear,
however, is that the political world that she was introduced to by her parents became
the foundation of her political activism, journal-
ism and teaching, all strands of a holistic mission, throughout her adult life.
Witwatersrand University, politics and coming of age
Ruth First majored in Social Studies and received a Bachelor of
Arts degree in 1946. She spent five years at the University of the
Witwatersrand (Wits), yet her formal education was secondary to both her
political and social awakening. She was heavily involved in leftist political
work – both at the University and in the community. She attended political meetings,
the Left Book Club and the weekly orations at the Johannesburg City Hall, where
she gave her commencement address.
Ruth spent time at Salmon’s Bookshop, Peoples’
Bookshop and Vanguard Bookshop, where she could find Left Book Club books as
well as socialist publications. Ruth debated with com- rades at Florian’s Cafe,
a Johannesburg coffee
shop that was opened during
her Wits years by German Jewish immigrants. She was a constant visitor
at 13 Kholvad House on Market
Street, the meeting
place for young
leftist activists between
1943 and 1946. It is here that she debated with
comrades like Ismail Meer, Joe Slovo, JN Singh, Michael Scott, Yusuf Cachalia, George Bizos, Bram Fischer, Tony O’Dowd, and Harold
Wolpe. While the discussions were informal, Ruth is remembered as a comrade who
questioned commonplaces and challenged her comrades. This was informal
teaching, but she nevertheless played a significant role in educating
her colleagues.
While still a student at Wits, Ruth First participated in two
more formal teaching experiences. Along with Berman and long-time comrade
Rusty Bernstein, she taught
literacy classes to black South Africans at one of the CPSA night schools. Her
second pedagogical experience at the time came as she travelled through Europe
just before her final year of undergraduate studies. Travelling with Harold
Wolpe, she went to London for the World Federation of Democratic Youth
conference. She continued on to Prague for a meeting
of the International Union of Students and then to France, Hun- gary
and Yugoslavia, speaking
to local groups about South Africa and learning about revolutionary movements in Europe. Ruth notes this experience
in 117 Days (First
1965), and she wrote a descriptive and detailed, but not reflective, article at the time in
The Passive Resister.
The
Guardian, politics, and mentoring young journalists
After she completed
her studies at the University of Witwatersrand, Ruth First took a
position at the Social Welfare
Department of the Johannesburg City Council. She was
hired as a researcher and her job was to document city life for a commemorative
celebration of the 50th Jubilee of Johannesburg. When the
African miner’s strike approached in August 1946, Ruth quit her job, telling
her supervisor that she wished to
do ‘political work.’
Ruth First was elected to the Johannesburg District of the CPSA
in 1946. Years later she spoke with John Heilpern
about how she had joined
the Party.
I became a communist because
it was the only organisation known to me in South
Africa that advocated meaningful changes. And because it wasn’t just a
policy, but something positive. They wanted to do something. They were immersed
in the struggle for equality. They were committed. (Heilpern
1967: NP)
Ruth began her work at The Guardian at the end of 1946 as the manager of the Johan- nesburg bureau. According to James
Zug, Ruth was responsible for adding the representation of black voices and articles
on black issues at the paper (Zug 2007: 90,
91). She wrote weekly editorials as well as ‘muck-raking‘ articles,
sometimes as many as 16 a week. She was also a mentor
to the young African journalists who joined the paper in the 17 years she devoted to The Guardian.
In the fifties, the list of young writers included Alfred Hutchinson,
Joe Gqabi and Willie Kgostile. She pushed Hutchinson very hard and he credited
her with providing him with the craft to write the story of his escape from the apartheid
regime, Road to Ghana. Gquabi, who, like Ruth, was assassinated by the
apartheid government, was nurtured by Ruth in his work as a writer and
photographer. Kgostile spoke about Ruth First.
In fact I found that Ruth used to encourage
me a lot. She would say, ‘Look, I’m going to talk to you about such-and-such, and I need you to point out some of the problems
which you see out of what I’m saying.
If you disagree with me, don’t be shy – speak.’ She was one of the white people who really made
me feel that she wants me to know as much as she does. (Zug 2007: 309)
Teaching and mentoring were integral to Ruth’s role as an
editor. In general, one might say that she was The Guardian.
One example of Ruth First
as a mentor, at this time, comes from her comrade, Albie
Sachs, who was her junior in the political movement in 1954. Sachs accompanied Ruth to Bejing for an organising meeting
of the World Federation of
Democratic Youth. Both First and Sachs were to speak at the meeting, and he
recalls Ruth carefully reading and critiquing his paper before he presented it
to the conference (Sachs 2011). A second life-long comrade, Ronnie Kasrils, also spoke of Ruth First
as his mentor. Kasrils recalled
Ruth’s generosity even before they became comrades. At the
suggestion of Party stalwart Rowley Arenstein, the young Kasrils sent Ruth a
political poem he had written. Ruth responded positively and provided him with a reference to the Daily Worker in London (Kasrils
2011).
In 1963 there were two banning orders: one restricting Ruth
First to Johannesburg, and the second preventing her from attending any
political or social gatherings. In spite of her new constraints, Ruth visited Rivonia
almost daily, sometimes
for strategy meetings, but
also in a mentorship role to work with Govan Mbeki to edit his manuscript on peasantry in South Africa that he had written
on toilet paper while in detention. The manuscript was to become The Peasant
Revolt after it was smuggled
out of the country to be published
in 1964 as part of the Penguin
Africa Library. On 3
June 1963 Joe Slovo left South Africa on a mission to promote
the armed struggle against apartheid in other African
nations. He would not return until 1990. With Joe Slovo
away, all ‘normalcy’ collapsed
when Ruth First was apprehended on 9 August
1963 under a 90-day detention order. She was arrested at the
Cullen Library at the University of the Witwatersrand and taken into custody,
just 29 days after her com- rades were detained in the raid at Lilliesleaf,
leading to the Rivonia Trial: she was expecting the arrest. Ruth chronicled her incarceration and its aftermath in her book
117 Days (First
1965).
When Ruth was released in late November, Joe and her father
Julius were living in London. Joe wanted Ruth and their daughters to join him
as soon as possible. Although she knew that she had to leave South Africa, she did not want to be viewed as
having deserted the cause. She did apply for a passport but was turned down by
the South African government. Instead, she was offered an exit permit that arrived
on 9
March 1964, informing her that she was approved ‘to leave the
Republic of South Africa permanently’. Ruth was followed from her home by
Special Branch officers as she was driven to Jan Smuts International Airport to
leave South Africa.
Exile in London in the sixties – writing, speaking, and studying politics
When Ruth First initially arrived
in London she clearly believed
that the struggle against apartheid was lost.
In addition, she was worried
about how she and Joe would
support their family. Her anxieties
were
political,
professional
and
personal.
Encouraged by friends like Ronald Segal as well as Joe, she remained committed
to social justice as both a writer and a speaker. She had published
South West Africa
in
1963, and she dived into writing 117 Days, her prison memoir,
which she completed in the quiet of Cecil Williams’
London flat. As she was working to finish writing
117 Days, Ruth was also helping to edit Govan Mbeki’s book, The Peasants’ Revolt, as well as a
collection of Nelson Mandela’s writings
and speeches, No Easy Walk to Freedom. Mbeki’s book was published
in 1964 and No Easy Walk to Freedom,
like 117 Days, came out in 1965. At the time of publication both Mandela and Mbeki were beginning
their decades of imprisonment on Robben Island, and Ruth would never see them
again. All three books were banned in South Africa.
Writing in 1964, Ruth began the preface
of The Peasants’ Revolt with the following sentence: ‘This book has had a painful birth.’
She recounts Mbeki
writing while on the
run from authorities as well as during a pre-Rivonia sentence in prison. The
prison writing had been done with pencil stubs on toilet paper. At this time
she was also working on policy papers with Oliver Tambo that he presented to
other African leaders. Ruth First began her association with the United Nations as well as Amnesty
International in 1964. Initially, this work centred
on prison conditions in South Africa. Reflecting the same degree of persistence seen in her journalistic work in South Africa,
Ruth’s determined campaign
led to the appointment of a United
Nations Special
Investigative Commission.
Ruth worked relentlessly during her first years in London. She worried about money,
unconvinced that she could earn a living as a journalist and writer. She applied for an
academic fellowship at the University of Manchester, but was informed by Peter
Worsley, considered in the United Kingdom as one of the founders of the New
Left, that they felt that they needed to continue to support her comrade, Jack
Simon, who was already in the position. Thinking that an academic career might
facilitate her political, economic and personal aspirations, Ruth enrolled in graduate studies
at the London School
of Economics (LSE)
in 1966. She also began
a long list of book projects.
Similar to her work for The Guardian
in South Africa, Ruth’s writing was political, sociological and also
ideological. At LSE she met scholars from across the world, and was clearly
influenced by the burgeoning New Left, an ideological perspective that was
often not welcome amongst her comrades in the CPSA.
Her ideas were respected by New Left stalwarts such as Tarik
Ali, and she had the honour of studying with Belgian-born Ralph Milliband, a
one-time student of Harold Laski and one of the leading anti-Stalinist
theoreticians of New Left politics. Ruth took
Milliband’s courses at LSE, and they spent time in each other’s
homes, where the conversations were usually political.
Milliband admired Ruth First.
She was the least ‘utopian’ of revolutionaries; but she was not in the least
‘disillusioned’; she never gave the slightest hint of doubt about the
justice of her cause or about the urgent need to strive for its advancement.
She deplored the shortcomings, stupidities and
crimes of her own side. But this never dimmed her sense that there was a struggle to be fought against the monstrous tyranny
that is South Africa ... Beyond all disappointments and setbacks, it was [the] sense of the reality of oppression
which moved her. (Williams 1982: NP)
Ruth First found new excitement in her life at this time as the people she met, both at the London School of Economics and
generally, expanded her world outside of the boundaries of the SACP. One of her
friends at LSE at the time was a young man named Danny Schechter. Schechter
returned to the United States in the late sixties and launched a news
organisation called the African Research Group. He and Ruth often corresponded,
helping each other with information on what was happening on the continent.
They also collaborated from afar on research on the CIA. Schechter’s first
memories of Ruth First are instructive.
At LSE in my class I saw this really
attractive woman who was clearly older, professional, not sort of the student
culture, and when she spoke
and asked questions she was extremely compelling, very brilliant. Ruth was also interested and intrigued by the
American New Left. So here’s
this woman who is very intimidating to me initially – didn’t take any
shit. (Schechter 2010)
Schechter provides an insightful analysis
of Ruth First’s
time in England,
saying ‘she was not playing the revolution; she was making
the revolution, or trying to’ (Schechter
2010).
Being in and out of London became a pattern
until Ruth took an academic
position at the University of
Manchester in 1972. Joe’s time included working in the Goodge Street office
of the ANC and travelling to the German
Democratic Republic, the Soviet
Union, Angola, Zambia and Tanzania. Ruth’s travel included multiple research
trips to Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra
Leone, Sudan, Ethiopia
and Libya by the
end of the decade. While Ruth had numerous projects, much of her work in Africa
at the time was researching for her future book, The Barrel of a Gun (First 1970). She
was besieged by speaking and writing requests, and continued to do research
reports for the United Nations. In 1972 she was awarded
the Manchester Fellowship that had earlier eluded
her. She had made an ideological shift
in her writing on Africa,
moving from the SACP theoretical conscript of ‘colonialism of a special
kind’ and traditional Marxist analysis to more of a C Wright Mills,
New Left Power Elite view, stressing the importance of socialism in the context of class and race
oppression. Gavin Williams analysed this shift many years later in a lecture at
Rhodes University.
Ruth did not engage with the dialectical
controversies of the 1970s, when intellectuals were concerned to elaborate
definitive versions of Marxist theories. Ruth made use of and, at Durham
University, taught theories of development and underdevelopment not for their
own sakes but to explain historical events and institutional structures.
(Williams 2010: NP)
This point of view energised Ruth’s journalism, reports, books
and eventually her teaching. She had breadth that made her very attractive to
faculty and students at Manchester. It was during her year at Manchester that she began a collegial/political relationship with
Gavin Williams, a South African-born sociologist who at the time was on the
faculty of Durham University. He would later teach at Oxford, and after reading
Ruth’s work and meeting her at both academic conferences and political
meetings, he encouraged her to apply for an open position in the Sociology Department at Durham. Ruth was initially reticent, as she did
not have a PhD. The head of the department,
Phillip Abrams, however,
was very positive
about Ruth’s applying
for the position, as he recognised the value of her work. Williams wrote a recommendation, as did Thomas Hodgkin,
Ronald Segal, Sir Robert Birkey,
Peter Worsley and a number
of Manchester professors. Williams’ letter of support read
Last term she gave a lecture at Durham on
the military in underdeveloped countries which
in my view was a model of clarity of exposition of complex and unfamiliar material to my undergraduates. Tony Barnett prescribed The Barrel of a Gun as one of the key
books in the course on sociology of developing societies, which is of course
the one we would be wanting her to teach if she were appointed. (Williams 1973:
NP)
Becoming an academic
Ruth was appointed
to the position and lectured
at Durham University from 1973 to
1978. She taught numerous courses, including the Sociology of
Developing Societies, during her first year. The syllabus was rather typical
of the new orthodoxy of the time, which relied heavily upon Dependency
Theory, but according to Williams Ruth’s experiences as an activist
and journalist brought
both breadth and depth to the course
(Williams 2011). During
her second year,
she helped develop
a team-taught course
on Sociology of Industrial Development. Students studied industrialisation
during their second year and development in the third year. While colleagues
collaborated on the course, Ruth was mostly responsible for the development
section. She also taught Political Sociology, Third World Social Movements, and Sociology and Gender during her years at the University. The Sociology of Gender course
is interesting in that Ruth has
been credited with pioneering the course as part of a shift
to feminist scholarship. The most noticeable sign of that shift came some years later, with the publishing of her book on Olive Schreiner. The course took the form of a student-initiated seminar,
with Ruth being the most logical instructor. In addition to her
appointment at Durham, Ruth developed a course for young people who wanted to
be writers, using the exper- tise that she had developed in her own attempts to
have her writing published. The curriculum included topics such as ‘internal
structure’ and ‘administration of pub- lishers’, ‘creative role of editors and
agents, contracts, subsidiary rights, production, marketing’, and more.
Ruth First never promoted herself
as a fashionable academic. Gavin Williams related this characteristic to her
intensity and powerful work ethic.
She certainly never had a sort of fan club
in a way that some star academics do. You know, a group of people who associate themselves very closely with an academic
star. It was a very small
department. I think
she was too acerbic for that to be feasible. But also it wasn’t her style. She was getting on
with things – doing things. She had no interest in having that sort of set of
followers. It just didn’t fit. (Williams 2011)
However, she did have a powerful effect on some students, both
formal university students and others whom she mentored just as she had during
her time at The Guardian. She was able to hire some of her students from England when she left Durham to work at Eduardo Mondlane
University in Maputo.
Included in that group
were Judith Head, who was subsequently a member of the Sociology Department at
the University of Cape Town,
and Chris Gerry,
who teaches at the University College of Swansea. Gerry recalled being Ruth’s student at
Durham:
As a young research student, I was introduced to her at Durham University and she played a very important
role in sorting out some of the inevitable clumsiness and errors in the
first academic article I submitted for publication. The legacy Ruth leaves in
the university and outside
is bigger than the sum of all its parts
– bigger than Ruth herself, because she caused so much to
develop in others and demanded as much from those around her as she did from
herself. (Gerry 1982: 3)
Ruth also continued to mentor young journalists. Michael
Wolfers, who recorded her last public talks for Radio Mozambique, recalled
asking Ruth to read his work when he
was a young writer.
I took the manuscript to Ruth and she found
time to read it and to give me pages of trenchant comment and criticism. Her notes were a mix of line by line commentary and introduction to areas of theory and
understanding that were entirely new to me. I reworked and rewrote the material
and was saved from much slackness of thought through Ruth’s incisiveness.
(Wolfers 1982)
While Ruth First became very much a part of Britain’s academic
world in the mid- seventies, it is important to emphasise the fact that she
never left the world of pro- gressive politics. Often her life as an academic
and revolutionary were wed. In collaboration with Williams, Lionel Cliff, John
Saul, Chris Allen, Robin Cohen and Peter Lawrence, she launched the Review of African Political
Economy, an academic journal that was committed to a
radical analysis of race, class and oppression in Africa. She also attended
both African National Congress meetings and those of the Anti-Apartheid
Movement, and she encouraged young comrades who did not neces- sarily follow
the ANC or the SACP party lines to become involved in the movement (Legassick
2011). At meetings she did not hesitate to engage in radical and contro-
versial debate. For example, Gavin Williams recalls a meeting of the
Anti-Apartheid Movement where she was attacked after criticising the movement’s
support of ZAPU in Rhodesia.
I sat next to Ruth, on her right-hand side, at the meeting. Thabo Mbkei then came up to
sit on my right-hand side. He had no love for me. His purpose
was presumably to keep an eye on Ruth. Afterwards, at her house
over drinks, she said that Thabo was the sort of person who, come the
revolution, would put you up against a wall and shoot you. (Williams 2011)
On a lighter
note, Williams also remembers Ruth complaining about the South African
academic mafia during a meeting of the British Historical Association. He
quickly reminded her that she was a member.
But most importantly, as both an academic and a revolutionary, Ruth First wanted
people to challenge commonplaces, especially those of her own political camp.
Rica Hodgson recalled
being with Ruth at a meeting of ANC women in London.
Ruth was not one of the speakers
that day, she was on the floor. The chairperson said: ‘In the Soviet Union 75% of the doctors are women.’ Everybody
cheered and clapped,
you see. Ruth said: ‘Excuse me
madam chair, have you ever seen a woman up in the presidium with all those
double breasted suits.’ She wasn’t letting them get away with anything.
(Hodgson 2011)
A Semester at the University of
Dar es Salaam
While Ruth First was engaged in academics and politics during
her time at Durham University, she continually questioned why she personally,
and the ANC institutionally, were not doing more to get home and continue the struggle. She took a leave of absence from Durham in 1975,
spending one semester on the faculty of the University of Dar es Salaam, at the time one of the most vibrant institutions of higher education
on the African continent. Phillip Abrams worked on the logistics of the
exchange and while he questioned whether it was timely for Ruth academically,
he was certain that it was important for Durham to establish relationships with
universities in Africa (Harlow 2009: NP). It also appears that he knew that it
was important for Ruth, personally and politically. Although
Ruth spent only a semester
in Dar es Salaam, her time coincided with lectures and teaching by
Walter Rodney, Terence Ranger, Mahmood
Mamdani, Archie Mafeje and John Saul (Harlow
2009:
NP). She was excited by the conversations and debates with
colleagues, but was also taken aback at how vicious some of the debates became
and wrote to Joe on one occasion ‘but even my stony heart was moved by Ranger’s
plight’ (Harlow 2009: NP).
Upon her arrival,
the department chair informed her that she would teach the course he
was teaching. She had the weekend to prepare. Ruth was still
elated to be back on African soil. She wrote to Gavin
Williams, telling him how exciting it was to be teaching about issues that were directly relevant to her African students (Williams
2011). Thus, in spite of a great lack of supplies, the ambush of
the department chair, colleagues from the German Democratic Republic with whom
Ruth never got along, she was there to teach and interact with students. The
semester was somewhat of a precursor to what was soon to become her life at
Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique. She taught the second-term economics
course and the syllabus topics included theories of underdevelopment,
strategies of development, industrialisation, rural development, rural cooperation in Tanzania, and class and development (Harlow
2009: NP). Ruth’s course notes, located in The Ruth First Papers,
capture something of the flavour of the course. Especially
instructive is her concern for student feedback:
Hope you’ll speak up, even dissatisfaction,
complaints. Lectures pack too much? Too thin? Coming over too fast? […]
Interruptions (questions) during lectures? You must judge. Break continuity –
danger. Throw me off my balance? On the other hand sometimes helpful
to ask for clarification. And if I can’t give it at the time I promise
to go away and think about it for the following
time. As for seminars, these are to be ‘working sessions’, she emphasises to the
students. YOU to do the work.’ (Harlow 2009: NP)
Ruth wrote Joe that she was excited about her students
throughout her semester in Tanzania. She was pleased that the university had
appeared to be serious about enrolling older students and in one early letter
she said:
I’m amazed at the level of my students, though I’m sure there are duds and conservatives
among them too … From the looks
of it numbers of older
people, experienced people
have got in, and their commitment is very earnest,
even if only for careers.
(Harlow 2009: NP)
First did question her students who were driven by ‘fixed ideological position’ and wondered out loud whether they were
going to use their university credentials to become bureaucrats above other
callings. Yet she was aware that the Tanzanian students were not uniform, and
she shared this perspective in a later letter to Joe.
My course hit a few good high spots – and some low – but they’re
hipped to the analysis of under-development, and it’s really
intriguing how they react when they have to apply their method to Tanzania. This is when the divide
comes. The radicals
persevere with the analysis; the nationalists take refuge in statements about
exceptions. Or something even less tangible. (Harlow 2009: NP)
Ruth First left Tanzania at the end of the semester. While there were both highs and
lows during her stay, it might be that she returned to England and her position
at Durham knowing full well that it would only be a short time before she
returned to Africa, which she believed was her academic and political home. In
England she divided her time between London
and Durham, continuing her torrid pace of writing, public speeches and lecturing.
She interacted with colleagues and students at Dur-
ham, worked studiously on the Review
of African Economy
as well as on forthcoming books.
In spite of the intensity
of her work in the United Kingdom,
First was driven to return to Africa. In March 1976 she wrote
to her friend and comrade, Aquino de Braganca, saying: ‘Beside a revolution,
doing a teaching job is mediocre stuff’ (De Braganca & O’Laughlin 1984: 159). Aquino had published
articles by Ruth in Afrique-Asie, and he responded to her letter after Mozambique was liberated and he
had founded the Centre of African
Studies (CEA). Ruth came to the Centre
in 1977 to direct a study on African miners, and she returned the
following year, taking an appointment as Assistant Director and then as Director
of Research. Although
it took her another year to formally resign from Durham, she
was firmly placed in Mozambique from 1977 onwards. Judy Head, Ruth’s student at
Durham, came to work with her at CEA: she remembers Ruth expressing how
important it was to be at home, geographically, politically and pedagogically
(Head 2011). Of course, the three dimensions were, to Ruth First, actually one.
While Ruth was finishing her book on Olive Schreiner with Ann Scott at the
time, she leapt into the work of the Centre. It should also be noted that not
long after her arrival, Maputo became one of the most important points of entry
back into South Africa by the ANC, SACP and Umkhonto we Sizwe. Joe Slovo led
the movement.
Coming home: Eduardo Mondlane
University
Aquino de Braganca believed that Ruth First was the perfect
person to lead the research on southern
Africa. For Ruth,
it was the opportunity to combine research
and teaching with a ‘direct revolutionary force’ (De Braganca &
O’Laughlin 1984: 160). While she was still doing
individual writing, it was on collaboration, and especially on the centre’s course, named The
Development Course, that Ruth focused her efforts. Staff at the CEA, with Ruth
as the leader, worked with cadres of worker-students. Defined succinctly by De Braganca
and O’Laughlin, ‘The course was innovative in its
objective – to teach research
by doing it’ (De Braganca
& O’Laughlin 1984:
161). More descriptively, students
came from different government workplaces, which included a bank credit manager, a director of a
port workers’ school, army officials, people from the education ministry, and
more. Staff members, including Ruth, taught collabor- atively, and attended the
classes with the students even if they were not formally teaching, with the goal of ‘constructing new forms of socialist agricultural production, state farms and cooperatives’ (De Braganca &
O’Laughlin 1984: 161). Quickly the course was expanded to include
non-agricultural social production. After addressing both theory and academic
construction of what was happening throughout the country, the course culminated
with a month-long field project where students and staff went together to live
amidst and study various sites of production – farms, cooperatives, mines,
shipping and more. Students were divided into brigades and usually two members of the CEA staff accompanied them on the field projects.
Ironically, it was Ruth who initiated the field projects, even
though she was totally a city person. In fact, she claimed that the ‘country
gave her a permanent headache’ (De Braganca & O’Laughlin 1984: 162). But she was committed
to the fieldwork because she believed that it would lead to the transformation
of peasant production, first in Mozambique and then in her native South Africa.
Ruth First herself considered this period
at the CEA to have been one of the most productive and militant in her life,
precisely because political struggle was directly integrated into her everyday
work of teaching, research, and writing. She considered her contribution to the consolidation of
the Mozambican Revolution to be a direct involve- ment in the liberation of South Africa.
This was possible
because she had a clear political
vision of her objectives and a sharp analysis of the political context within
which she worked. The importance of the Development Course derived for her not only from what it was in itself, but from where and when
it was located – in revolutionary Mozambique during a period of revolutionary
conjuncture in southern Africa. (De Braganca & O’Laughlin 1984: 162, 163)
Ruth First designed the course around four principles:
•
Implementing revolutionary strategy
is a matter of method – of using Marxist
method to investigate and analyse the concrete and constantly changing
situations
• which the revolution
confronts and directs
Promoting a revolutionary context,
where the university had to take on new forms
of training that took advantage of the experience
of cadres and responded to the
• requirements of everyday
practice
The struggle
to build socialism as a struggle
to transform the organisation of
• production
The struggle for national liberation in South Africa which was strategically of a
piece with the
struggle to build socialism in Mozambique
While the Development Course started with theory, the purpose was application, not memorisation or intellectualisation. When Ruth discussed theory in the course at the
1982 Social Science in Southern Africa Conference that she
organised for CEA, she said, ‘We’re very interested in provoking. If students
don’t ask questions then we are failing’ (Radio Mozambique 1982).
Ruth had endless discussions with her colleagues at the Centre
regarding the curriculum of the course. They were particularly concerned with
student partici- pation, i.e. getting
their adult students
to be fully involved and engaged, even though
all of the students were in full-time jobs. In the end, Ruth and her colleagues wanted their students to view ‘social
investigation as a necessary part of their work’ (De Braganca & O’Laughlin
1984: 165). Their task, of course, was not always successful. She addressed some
of the difficulties at the Social Science Conference:
The kinds of questions I’m referring to,
for instance, are the problems of how we teach students who have different
histories of education, come from widely different range of structures, the
university, ministries, mass organisations and so on. And I think that whereas
we should probably admit that we started off rather romantically about this,
saying it’s so important to crash educational barriers and break
this elitist monopoly, we
shall do it with sheer
willpower, in the course of teaching we have come to acknowledge that there are problems
… Now I don’t say we’ve resolved
it. We struggle with it. (Radio
Mozambique 1982)
Students and staff
went throughout the country, set up camps
and learned about
and worked with tea workers, contract harbour workers, small farmers and
cotton workers. Correspondingly, connecting their theoretical training and
field work, they learned about the colonial aspects and exploitation of family
agriculture, cheap contract labour, the petit-bourgeois trader
class, and technological exploitation. These
were all issues that were later expanded
upon in Ruth’s posthumous book, Black Gold,
a publication that came out of CEA work.
Besides managing the development course and other administrative tasks, Ruth also served as a mentor to the young
researchers who became part of CEA. Bridget O’Laughlin joined the Centre from a
post as an assistant professor at Stanford Uni- versity. Although quite
established as a scholar, and already well-published, she viewed Ruth as both a
teacher and colleague (De Braganca & O’Laughlin 1984). Jeanne Parneve was
still in her twenties when she came to work at CEA, and her recollections
include Ruth‘s aiding her as a researcher and writer while at the same time
nurturing her politically (Parneve 2010). Judy Head smiled as she recalled the
red marks that covered the pages of her dissertation, a document she wrote
while on the staff of the Centre (Head 2011). Finally, Helena Dolny, who would marry Joe Slovo in
1986, pointedly remembers Ruth First critiquing her writing (Dolny
2010). Of course, mentorship was not always smooth and there were political debates
and issues that ran
concurrently to the examples of mentorship. There were some CEA researchers who
believed that Ruth First was too ideological and somewhat harsh in her critique
of colleagues. This was especially true when the subject was South Africa, rather than workers in Mozambique. Finally,
there were also colleagues who believed
that Ruth was forcing them into projects
that did not utilise their expertise. Criticisms acknowledged, the general
spirit that came from the young researchers, as well as from Aquino de
Branganca, was that Ruth First nurtured, sometimes intensely and other times
gently, the work of other researchers at the Centre of African Studies. John Saul was at Universidad Eduardo
Mondlane at the time and he spoke to this very
issue.
Besides, even when one looked back at
moments of inter-personal tension one had had with her it was also with the realisation that such tensions
were not arbitrary ones, that almost invariably something important, intellectually and politically, was at stake.
The seriousness of her engagement, the intensity of her concern,
could never be doubted. Nor, if
you were struggling to be as serious yourself,
could such moments
cast any doubt upon
her personal concerns, her compassion, her continuing solidarity in the next
round of whatever struggle, public or personal, was in train. (Saul 1982)
We have previously referred to Ruth First speaking at the 1982
Social Science Conference that she hosted with Aquino de Branganca. Ruth organised the conference
and brought in extraordinary scholars of southern Africa from throughout the
world. The conference was to be her last act. Just one day after the meeting adjourned, Ruth
First was murdered
via a letter bomb sent by the South African
government. She died instantly, and her colleagues Aquino
de Branganca, Bridget O’ Laughlin and Pallo Jordan were seriously injured in
the attack. Ruth First, of course, was not the only comrade murdered by the
apartheid regime, and she was not the only academic. But her death was both
ironic and unique because many who knew Ruth First and Joe Slovo imagined that
it would be Joe Slovo who would be assassinated. The apartheid regime killed
Ruth First because they knew that ideas are important. They killed Ruth First
because she organised an international conference that questioned the authority and actions of the South African state. Shortly after Ruth was assassinated,
Joseph Hanlon, a journalist who had interviewed Ruth years earlier, explained
that while most academics would not understand, the murder of Ruth First
was a warning for academics. They should not attend conferences like
the one Ruth organised, and they should not support or practise research or
teaching that calls for socialist transformation (Hanlon 1982). Finally, the
South African government killed Ruth First because she mentored young
comrades in connecting ideas and actions
with the goal of democratic
socialism in South Africa. Her close friend, colleague and comrade Gavin
Williams summarised it best in his 2010 speech at Rhodes University.
Ruth First has come to be an icon of the revolutionary hero. This is to make too much of
her. It is also to make too little. There
is a danger that her real achievements, her bravery and her
integrity, will be hidden behind the mirror. Ruth combined during her life the
practical politics of the movement for liberation with commitments to
investigating, researching and explaining. (Williams 2010: NP)
Conclusion
It would be inappropriate to atomise Ruth First’s life. However, focusing
on her work as an educator portrays a breadth, politically, personally
and pedagogically, that is seldom expressed when Ruth is remembered. It is important to note that there is little
written about Ruth First. What is published
often comments on her style and her bold-
ness, and sometimes addresses her thinking outside
of the South African Communist Party. Without contradicting or
lessening Ruth’s pledge to the struggle against apartheid and justice throughout Africa, this small contribution provides
a window on how teaching and mentoring were part of
that commitment.
References
Author’s
interviews
Myrtle Berman, 2010
Helena Dolny, 2010
Ronald First, 2011
Judith Head, 2011
Rica Hodgson, 2011
Ronnie Kasrils, 2011
Martin Legassick, 2011
Jeanne Parneve, 2010
Albie Sachs, 2011
Danny Schechter, 2010
Gavin Williams, 2011
Ros
De Lanerolle, ND. Interview by Kate Carey, available in the Ruth First Papers,
ICC, University of London.
Broadcasts
Radio Mozambique – July 1982: Coverage and
recording of the Social Science Conference
Publications
Gerry, C. (1982) A tribute to Ruth First. Labour, Capital, and Society, 15(2): 3-4. Hanlon, J. (1982) Why South Africa had to kill Ruth First. London: New Statesman.
Harlow, B. (2009) Flushed with elation: Ruth First at the University of Dar es Salaam [online].
Williams, G. (1973) Letter
of reference, 29 June 1973.
Available in the Ruth First
Papers, ICC, University of
London.
Williams, G. (1982) Walter Rodney Lecture,
Boston University, 8 November 1982.
Williams, G. (2010) Portrait of a modern woman: Ruth First: Academic,
scholar and teacher.
Lecture given at Rhodes University, 17 August 2010.
Wolfers, M. (no date) In SWAM – Campaign
to stop the War Against
Angola and Mozambique, N. 6. 10, 11.
Zug, J. (2007) The Guardian:
The History
of South Africa‘s
Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid
Newspaper. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State
University Press.
