Ruth First’s Truth Lasts!
Ronnie Kasrils
It is an honour to have been invited by the Young Communist League (YCL) to deliver this lecture concerning one of its most illustrious former leaders, Comrade Ruth First. More especially since this is the centenary year of her birth; the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter. The events marked by these anniversaries, aligning with the struggle to free our country from race and class oppression, were seminal to shaping her entire life. It was after the critical years of that Second World War (1939-45) that she became secretary of the YCL.
Born in Johannesburg on 4th May, 1925, (almost sharing a birth date with Karl Marx – born 5 May, 1808), Ruth Heloise First was an outstanding revolutionary, passionate about justice and equality, who, through her Marxist education and practical experience, became focussed on developing ideas to drive social action. This can be seen in her range of endeavours as revolutionary scholar, investigative journalist and researcher; political activist, orator and organiser; and her membership of the South African Communist Party (SACP) until her death.
Ruth was interested in organisational methods and the development of critical ideas as drivers of social action. She had the honesty, courage and sharpness of intellect to break with conventional wisdom. A heroine of the African National Congress (ANC), SACP and liberation movement; she was a dangerous thorn in Apartheid’s flesh and marked down by the regime for persecution and elimination. She was assassinated on 17th August, 1982, in Maputo, at the age of 57. Her creative ideas and scholarship, coupled with her inspiring life remain of immense value to this day. Given the enormous socio-economic problems facing our country, the stark challenges confronted by the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), and the grim international situation, her life bears close study by all patriots, and particularly the SACP, the YCL and a younger generation of South Africans.
Phases of her Life
In order to understand Ruth in context, I aim to highlight:
An understanding of the role of the individual in history as a basis for reflecting on Ruth First’s life and contribution in the realm of her ideas and action;
Her family background and the early formative years that shaped her;
Her activity in the YCL and graduation at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in 1946;
Her career as an investigative reporter and editor of liberation movement journals;
Her activism in the 1950’s including membership of the underground SACP and her work with the ANC and Congress Movement, including being one of the 156 Treason Trialists (arrested in 1956) along with her husband Joe Slovo;
Her clandestine work following the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, and, among other things, her support for the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), leading to a harrowing detention of 117 days in solitary confinement; and subsequent exile in 1964;
The exile years in Britain 1964-1977, as an internationally acclaimed Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) figure, and university lecturer; publishing nine books with a focus on Africa;
The final chapter of her life, 1977-1982, as professor of social research in Maputo; and activism with Frelimo, ANC, MK and SACP; to her tragic death;
And finally, a consideration of what Ruth’s life teaches us in the critical challenges we face in South Africa and the region today.
Marxism
Marxism teaches that the masses make history, without ignoring the crucial role of the individual in the development of revolutionary ideas, scientific discoveries and inspiring great social forces in altering the world. Ruth was rigorous about political studies and took to heart Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach and its famous conclusion: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Throughout her life she sought the dialectical interplay between theory and practise as both an analyser and activist. She was committed to testing ideas in practise, making an invaluable contribution to the field of ideas. She was a fierce antagonist of dogma and the substitution of sloganizing and mechanical schemata in place of rigorous thinking; in the first place challenging her own mind. She was not afraid of ruffling the feathers of fellow comrades.
Ruth First was one such person and we seek to understand her in historical context: growing up in a world at war against fascism and within her geographic and social space, initially as a privileged white South African – a drama contextualised within a country deeply divided along race and class lines; colonised for almost three centuries up to the time of her birth; and coming under an even more brutal and rigid apartheid system as she attained adulthood.
Roots
Clearly Ruth’s upbringing and awareness motivated her to see what most whites chose not to see and led her to seek the truth; to understand and to act resolutely against injustice, which required high moral principles and courage.
Ruth First was born into an upwardly mobile, secular Jewish middle-class home. Her parents, Julius and Tilly First, were members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), so it can be said she was a Bolshevik Baby, and her mother in particular encouraged her to study Marxism and read widely. Julius and Tilly had arrived in the country as children in the opening decade of the 20th Century, with the wave of Jewish immigrants, to meet and marry by the time the CPSA was established in 1921, just four years before Ruth’s birth. They hailed from Latvia and Lithuania respectively, then part of the Czarist Russian Empire where Jews suffered from severe discrimination as second-class subjects. Such immigrants were working class, artisans and small traders, having survived poverty and bloody antisemitic, xenophobic pogroms. Many, but by no means the majority, were fervently religious, but very few were Zionists seeking salvation in Palestine. If anything, the USA was where most dreamed of emigrating to; with South Africa being among other destinations.
The founder members of the CPSA were a mix of radical white workers and socialists from Europe among them S.P. Bunting, Ivor Jones and Bill Andrews. By the time of Ruth’s birth, Tilly was a member, alongside the first black leaders to rise to prominence, including Albert Nzula, Edwin Mafutsanyana, Josie Palmer, J.B. Marks, Johannes Nkosi, James La Guma, Johnny Gomez, Yusuf Dadoo and Moses Kotane, demonstrating the young Party’s growing outreach. T.W. Thibedi, became the first black person elected to the Party’s central committee.
Julius First founded a furniture factory which in later years when the Party was banned served as a refuge for comrades avoiding the police or as the venue for clandestine Party meetings. Ruth grew up in a household, where intense political debate took place among people of all races. Her parents had participated in the early Party discourse around the role of the white working class; the 1922 white miner’s revolt; the Communist International (Comintern) “Black Republic” thesis which led to an upsurge in black membership; the purge within the CPSA during the 1930s; revival of Party activity during World War Two and its support for the Soviet Union. Inevitably all this influenced Ruth, as she grew up hearing her parents discussing these arguments with comrades.
She became politically aware at her parents’ knees. Her mother, in particular, fostered her interest in reading and advised her on quality literature to read. At the age of 14, she joined the Junior Left Book Club, where youngsters discussed books and pulled slips of paper from a hat with topics to research and report back on. It was a wonderful way of involving young people, growing their self-confidence, and fostering an appreciation of self-discipline.
The political-economy of South Africa had undergone a seismic transformation by the time Ruth was born; the consequences of which shaped the times. The discovery of gold, a mere 39 years previously, profoundly changed the country and its people. Johannesburg at the time of Ruth’s birth was a young, brash city, fast growing and urban, a melting pot of people, with harsh exploitative conditions facing the black population, many living in shanty towns on the periphery, while the dominant Mining Houses, Randlords and pro-British influence ruled the roost.
The South African War between Boer and British, essentially a war for control over resources and wealth; the emergence of an African proletariat and the challenge to white supremacy and capital by the awakening giants of black labour, trade unionism and African nationalism, shaped the responses of revolutionaries of all stripes. The dual cleavage of class and colour in the country was reflected in the existence of the leading proponents of class and national struggle, initially set on different paths, which converged in the struggles to come – namely the CPSA and the ANC. The leading comrades of Ruth’s generation were central to the debate about the road to national and social emancipation; two stages or one; alliance with the ANC or not; and development of Colonialism of a Special Type (CST) and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) as the road to power.
YCL Secretary
Ruth matriculated at Jeppe Girls at the age of 16, receiving an education designed like that offered at other schools of its type to churn out white youngsters loyal to British ruling class traditions and ideology – something she was inoculated against. By the time she started a sociology degree at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in 1942, she became active in student politics, and joined the YCL.
It was at university that Ruth became acquainted with Nelson Mandela, Eduardo Mondlane – later President of Frelimo the Mozambican liberation movement – JN Singh and Ismail Meer, who became leaders of the South African Indian Congress; and later Joe Slovo, studying law after army service in Italy.
Lifelong communist Norman Levy, then aged 14, describes the impact she made on him, when he attended his first YCL meeting when Ruth had become secretary: “I still see her image as she was at that first meeting”, he writes fifty years later, “eighteen, curly-haired, short and ill at ease, pursuing her points at breakneck speed. She was earnest, self-conscious, and miserable with caring, but it was her energy and directness that marked her out from others.”
Among some thirty “others” present were the leading theoretician and scholar Lionel Foreman, Paul Joseph, Lucas Masebe – YCL national chairman, (possibly) Ahmed Kathrada, and the young man, her age, she married five years later, Joe Slovo. Despite appearing to Norman as “ill at ease” he points out that “Ruth and Lionel were the stars, however, and whatever fired them also drove the others.” (Norman Levy: The Final Prize – My life in the anti-apartheid struggle; South African History Online, 2011, pp 14-15).
I heard from one of her many admirers of the time, I think it was either Wolfie Kodesh or Ronnie Press, that both racist students and Trotskyist students, waxing irate over Ruth’s merciless denunciations, would chant “Ruth First, Truth Last!” To which her supporters would respond: “Ruth First’s Truth Lasts!”
She graduated with a BA (Social Studies), from Wits in 1946, obtaining first class passes in sociology, anthropology, economic history and so-called native administration. She was never destined to be an ivory tower academic, but was driven by Marx’s maxim: “understand the world and change it.”
Tempestuous Years
Ruth’s development as a foremost revolutionary theorist, teacher, writer and activist was honed through the tempestuous times of the 1940s-1950s. From the young orator rallying public support against fascism during World War Two, she became an active foot soldier duplicating and distributing leaflets during the 1946 African Mine worker’s strike.
During the height of the struggle in the 1950s, in which she played a central and significant role, issues were resolved not from ivory tower, or through purist notions, but in the harsh school of practical struggle, where the paths of class struggle and national resistance converged into a unique alliance between communists and nationalist revolutionaries – an achievement rarely seen in anti-colonial struggles.
Following the banning of the CPSA in 1950 she was part of the trusted circle in 1953 reviving the Party in its clandestine form as the SACP. As journalist she was searing and tireless in exposing the brutality of the apartheid regime; and was at the front-line reporting on the Defiance Campaign. She was a leader of the Congress of Democrats (COD), which she helped establish in 1953 – the small grouping of whites aligned with the ANC, Indian Congress, Coloured People’s Congress, and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu). But for a government banning order she would have attended the historic Congress of the People at Kliptown in 1955. From the shadows she assisted in formulating the Freedom Charter. Together with husband Joe Slovo, whom she wed in 1949 – and who had become a leading advocate – she was among the 156 accused in the marathon Treason Trial (1956-1961) at the age of 31.
Revolutionary Journalism
After a short stint as a researcher for the Johannesburg City Council, during which she also taught African workers in the Party’s evening school, she was drawn into journalism, working for the Guardian, a crusading, socialist weekly which became increasingly supportive of the ANC-led liberation movement, with communists keeping it running. For a decade it survived consecutive banning orders through strategic name changes, and the dedication of its editorial staff, most famously under the masthead New Age. The head office was in Cape Town under the editorship of Lionel Foreman until his untimely early death, followed by Brian Bunting, editor-in-chief until the final banning in 1962, when draconian laws made publication impossible. By then New Age had briefly endured as Spark. Ruth headed the Johannesburg office; Govan Mbeki was in charge in Port Elizabeth, and M.P. Naicker ran the Durban premises. These papers reflected the Leninist definition of a newspaper as an organising weapon. This was journalism at its very best, that spoke truth to power on behalf of the voiceless and downtrodden. It stands as a salutary counterpoint to contemporary media that cynically serves the interests of corporate capitalism and its often white-dominated, Western-funded, and in an unholy alliance with Western imperialism.
Working with rural struggle stalwart Gert Sibande, and her protégé Joe Gqabi, Ruth famously played a pivotal role in exposing the farm labour scandal. This work demonstrated her research-driven, investigative journalism, writing skills and steely determination. It exposed the brutal system run by the police and magistrates, which consigned pass law offenders to virtual slave labour on white-owned farms like the Bethel potato farms. The meticulous research, skilful reporting, and the subsequent protest campaign, epitomised the power of a weekly newspaper like New Age.
Her writing on such topics as the defiance campaign, the mobilisation and consultation leading to the adoption of the Freedom Charter, the women’s anti-pass protests, migrant labour system, bus boycotts, and slum conditions, are outstanding pieces of social and labour journalism amidst the upsurge of resistance in the 1950s. Her methodology, often utilising often clandestine methods of acquiring evidence from facts on the ground, was the forerunner of her much later work in Mozambique, of participatory research at the grassroots. Concurrently she edited the monthly journal, Fighting Talk, which provided penetrating political analysis as well as carrying literary contributions. This latter role illustrated Ruth’s ability to draw in cultural figures like Nadine Gordimer, Barney Simon, Drum writers and poets, and jazz musicians.
Today, what often passes for “investigative journalism” – frequently funded by Western governments and carried out through white-run NGOs – obsessively focuses on black corruption, often with a tone of sneering contempt. In some instances, vicious attacks have been mounted against progressive media. Ruth’s work stands as a shining example of a radically different kind of investigative journalism – one that probes the conditions of oppression.
Like decent people around the world she would have been outraged at the brazen slaughter of the tens of thousands of people in Gaza. She would have felt deeply the deliberate killing of children, along with the women and men. She would have understood the reason for the targeted assault on fellow journalists in an attempt to wipe out the truth. Israel has murdered 216 media workers to date, far more than in any other conflict since WW2. Ruth, would, I am sure, have been particularly moved and outraged by the murder of Shereen Abu Aqleh, another fine and courageous woman journalist.
Ruth First and Joe Slovo were a charismatic and sociable couple, developing life-long friendships, and their home in Roosevelt Park, Johannesburg, was the scene of many joyful parties, where black and white people had rare moments of shared conviviality – while agitated police would glare from outside and take down car registration numbers.
The police raids, banning orders, and arrest of parents – common experiences in many struggle households – unsettled the children. The Slovo family was no exception. By then they had three talented daughters – Shawn, Gillian and Robyn – each of whom went on to successful careers as prolific writers and film makers. Shawn wrote the screenplay for a film about her mother called A World Apart. One of Gillian’s many novels, Ties of Blood, is based on the family history. Robyn produced a movie scripted by Shawn about MK called Catch a Fire, and co-produced the prize-winning documentary film, Oliver Tambo’s London Recruits.
Ruth was often tasked by the Party to travel abroad to participate in meetings, experiencing at first hand conditions of socialist development in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China, which she enthusiastically conveyed to a liberation movement eager to learn about alternatives to capitalism and racist rule.
She had learnt from her parents, and then the YCL and Party, during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, the vital necessity of international solidarity. These international trips brought her into direct contact with revolutionaries from all over the world, deepening her appreciation for such solidarity in action. With her work in the AAM, in which she had played such an important role in mobilising international support in the struggle to isolate the apartheid regime, came the realisation that solidarity was not a one-way street, but a value that was mutual, reinforcing the internationalism of revolution pitted against the alliances of counter-revolution.
This tradition of internationalism lives on in the Party, which is involved in campaigns supporting the people of the Basque Country, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lebanon, Palestine, Polisario, Russia, Sudan, Swaziland, Venezuela, Yemen, and others. As we build internationalism we hear Ruth’s voice imploring us to intensify our efforts.
Through struggle, nationalists like Mandela and Sisulu moved beyond their early anti-communist tendencies and sought to learn Marxism from the Party. Ruth, alongside Michael Harmel, was one of the leading Party comrades entrusted with this highly sensitive task. Ruth’s influence on ANC leaders like Mandela, Sisulu and others, cannot be overstated. I would go so far as to say that this was one of her most important achievements. Her handling of such relationships – a woman tutoring the foremost African revolutionary men of the time in theory, while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them in struggle – was a testament to her unique political acumen and strength.
Armed Struggle
Following the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960, and the state of emergency that followed, Ruth managed to avoid arrest and seek refuge with her young daughters in Swaziland, whilst her husband was detained with hundreds of others. When the emergency was lifted, they were reunited back home, with the situation becoming more challenging and demanding further sacrifice.
16 December, 1961, heralded the birth of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in which Joe Slovo – later Chief-of-Staff in exile – was dual commander, on behalf of the SACP, with Mandela. Ruth was involved during the initial Sabotage Campaign, which also involved the production and distribution of leaflets and other literature. Walter Sisulu’s radio broadcast message from the underground was partly her writing. Following the Rivonia arrests, she worked in stealth alongside Bram Fischer and Hilda Bernstein, to assist and link those in hiding. Whilst Joe was abroad on a mission arranging training and weapons for MK, thus missing being arrested at Rivonia, time was running out for Ruth. She was arrested in August, 1963 under the 90-day Detention Act, and held in solitary confinement for 117 days – which later became the subject of a searing book with that title.
Detention was an arduous ordeal of mental torture which she struggled to endure, but she emerged without surrendering a shred of information to her tormentors. As a security officer revealed to her: “You could have been charged in the Rivonia case. But we didn’t want a woman in that case.”
Fortunately, her mother was available to care for the children. Tilly’s husband Julius First, who had helped finance the purchase of the Party’s underground Rivonia farm headquarters, had fled into exile. Ruth had no choice but to leave on an exit visa with her mother and children, which meant they were forbidden to return to South Africa. They joined Joe in London. With the underground effectively smashed inside South Africa, there was no alternative but to live and work in exile, to fight another day. None imagined it would last as long as 25 more years.
Exile
Amid these difficult conditions, where immense strength and dedication were required to hold onto the dream of a free South Africa, a busy new chapter began in Ruth’s active life, lasting from 1964-1977 in Britain. The Slovo family set-up home in the borough of Camden Town, London, with Julius and Tilly as neighbours; and the young girls having to restart their schooling in new, strange surrounds – not easy for parents and children. They were, however, a close family unit, and it was evident – as I observed while working closely with Joe – that Ruth and Joe had created a secure and loving home, despite both being deeply engaged in political and academic work, which required frequent travel – especially Joe, due to his Party commitments abroad. Their home in Camden Town drew many friends, and as in Johannesburg, was a centre of social and political activity.
Ruth was a leading figure in the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), often serving as a keynote speaker, and she was held in the highest regard by the British Left, the intelligentsia, and a growing number of youthful activists. For six years she commuted between London and Durham, in the north of England, where she lectured in developmental studies. Alongside her comrade and colleague Harold Wolpe, she engaged with leading left academics, developing new theories about South Africa’s economy, including Marxist Professor, Ralph Miliband; British Communist Party author on Africa, Jack Woddis; American writer William Pomeroy; South African exiles Ronald Segal and Ros Ainslee; and Vietnam solidarity organiser Tariq Ali. She showed an interest in the rising New Left thinking, and activity, and unlike many in the exile ranks sought to interact with the New Left to test and refresh her Marxism and understand their viewpoint.
This drew criticism from within the Party and she was cold-shouldered by some. It is not true, however, that she was ever suspended from the Party. She became critical of the Soviet Union, questioning its bureaucratical nomenklatura, and the 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia. She was affronted that there were so few women in the Soviet central committee which at times numbered several hundreds of members. In sixty-nine years of the USSR’s history not a single woman served on its Politbureau. On one occasion, Ruth hammered me pointing out that in wartime, there had been heroines like Ludmila Pavlichenko – the anti-Nazi sniper credited with 309 officers killed. She had been a particular hero of mine since my military training in Odessa in 1964. Yet, Ruth, noted, aside from the woman cosmonaut, Valentine Tereshkova, there were no women in top political positions. I readily admit that Ruth sometimes gave me a hard time, but I came to realise that if she spoke harshly, it was because she was willing to face harsh criticism herself. I sulked over the Pavlichenko tirade, but she later surprised me with a charming gift – a recording of the Woody Guthrie song praising “Miss Pavlichenko well known for her fame”.
Ruth regarded herself as a “late bloomer” regarding feminism but remained cautious of reducing politics to identity alone. She certainly motivated and encouraged young women in their activism – and they were greatly inspired by her; but then so were the young male cadres. If anything, Ruth did not want to be consigned to women’s politics. Throughout her political life she was in the forefront of the movement and not by way of tokenism owing to her gender.
Some mistakenly view her as a “dissident”, “dissenter” or “individualistic free thinker” because she was unafraid to raise awkward questions or break new ground, while others remained stuck in a groove, simply repeating old slogans. Ruth’s Marxism was that which was developed and advocated by Marx himself. It was a dialectical understanding that theory must develop alongside ever changing conditions: “ask questions and doubt everything” in a disciplined way and enrich theory through praxis – the unity of theory and action. To “understand the world and change it” one had to stay attuned to date an ever-changing world and avoid remaining steeped in the past. This necessity remains as relevant today as ever.
Editor & Author
Ruth’s period in Britain was her most prolific in terms of writing. Apart from numerous articles in the Anti-Apartheid News, the ANC’s Sechaba journal, and other publications, she would have contributed to The African Communist, but unfortunately her nom de plume has not been verified. My sense is that she probably penned articles on the Sudan, Kenya and Libya, and other African issues including military coups and challenges of development. Research in this regard needs to be pursued.
Ruth was instrumental in establishing The Review of African Political Economy in 1974 focusing on the political economy of inequality, exploitation, and oppression. The journal was the brainchild of a group of young British and South African Marxists with links to Tanzania. One of them, Katherine Salahi (then Levine), one of the London Recruits previously referred to, has explained to me the benefit of having Ruth on board:
…apart from anything else, she was the only one in the collective who had any publishing experience. And of course, her political nous was key. She was a vital part of the collective from early on, incredibly supportive and generous with her time both politically and practically, and steered us towards a more professionally produced publication than we were capable of in our ignorance. She also brought South African academics – Gavin Williams and Robin Cohen – into the working group. Archie Mafeje was on the advisory group and they clashed on the pages of the journal…I have memories of her helping stamp, label and stuff envelopes; she was never above getting her hands dirty. (Email: August, 27, 2020)
Ruth authored and edited several books which reflect her passion for Africa. These saw her travelling to the continent on numerous occasions to collect information on the spot. Her work swiftly gained her an international reputation as a leading authority on Africa.
She researched and edited the writings of both Nelson Mandela and Govan Mbeki, which were published respectively as No Easy Walk to Freedom in 1967 – not to be confused with Mandela’s later autobiography- and The Peasants Revolt, published that same year. That was an extremely busy year. Beginning in 1966 she collaborated with Kenya’s Oginga Odinga, a socialist who opposed Jomo Kenyata’s corrupt one-party rule, – in editing his autobiography Not Yet Uhuru, which was published in 1967. Her 1964 detention in South Africa was recounted in her deeply moving book under 117 Days. Published in 1965. It later became the subject of a TV documentary in which she portrayed herself. Alongside fellow South African exile, Ronald Segal, she edited South West Africa: Travesty of Trust (1967).
In the 1970s, she published The Barrel of a Gun: The Politics of Coups d’état in Africa (1970); followed by Libya: The Elusive Revolution (1974), and, with Jonathan Steele and Christabel Gurney, The South African Connection: Western Investment in Apartheid (1972).
It was during this time that she became absorbed in contemporary feminist works, resulting in an outstanding biography: Olive Schreiner (1980) which she wrote with Anne Scott. Particularly prescient, given the current situation in South Africa, was this observation she made in Barrel of a Gun about the coups in West and North Africa, highlighting the corruption and selfishness of emergent African elites: “It grows through politics, under party systems, under military governments, from the ranks of business, and from the corporate elites that run the state, the army and the civil service.” She understood that in certain conditions patriotic officers linked to the masses could emerge from military ranks to lead revolutionary change, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. I believe she would classify Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso in this category.
Mozambique
In 1977, Ruth jumped at the chance to work in Africa, when Frelimo, with which she was closely-aligned sought her out to run the Centre for African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. Drawing together a dynamic collective of young intellectuals she trained students in research techniques, and directed several large field studies on relations between agriculture and the state. Her best-known project researched the lives of migrant labourers who worked on the South African gold mines. The results of this study, which pioneered a form of participatory grassroots research, was published the year after her death as Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant (1983). We can say this with a certainty that she would have been appalled at the rise of xenophobia in our country today, at the brutal attacks on fellow African migrants, scapegoated for crime and unemployment by ostensible leaders, some within the ANC.
The Mozambican chapter in her life, from 1977 to 1982, saw her closely involved with the ANC in Maputo, addressing meetings and assisting young cadres involved in reconstructing the underground within South Africa. She was a keen member of the SACP structures and always encouraged comrades in their work; to follow Lenin’s exhortation of “the concrete analysis of the concrete situation,” and to be open minded and “question everything” in a logical manner. Ruth was in her prime; and living in an apartment with Joe.
Everyone assumed that Joe would be the prime target for the murderous apartheid regime. However, the life of this extraordinary woman was cut down by a parcel bomb, which she opened in her office on the 17thof August, 1982. It was part of a growing number of assassinations by apartheid hit-squads; and followed the murder the year before of her New Age protégé, Joe Gqabi in Harare. There was an outpouring of grief internationally, with 3,000 attending her funeral in Maputo.
In his funeral oration, Moses Mabhida, General-Secretary of the SACP, declared: “The bomb that took Comrade Ruth’s life was intended to deprive our movement of the services of one of its most gifted militants. We openly acknowledge the exceptional gravity of the loss to us caused by her death. But we equally proclaim that her immense contribution to our movement will never be lost but will help to guide our actions and inspire our militants in the years to come.”
He ended with the words: “We want to say, ‘Farewell, Comrade Ruth and we want to assure you that the struggle you so loved will be carried out with all determination and intensity.” (my emphasis).
Legacy
We still grieve for the life of Ruth First; who would have been 100 this year. Whilst we pay tribute to her, can we say in all honesty that the assurance given by Moses Mabhida, at her graveside 43 years ago, is being carried out by the Movement she gave her life for? To repeat the commitment: “that the struggle you so loved will be carried out with all determination and intensity.”
There is much Ruth would have been thrilled about if she could cast her brilliant critical eye over our country today. This would include the ANC’s insistence on the elevation of women to high government posts, and to a significant presence in parliament. But without question she would have been appalled at the state of the ANC and country today. I have no doubt that she would have raised her trenchant voice against the corruption, crony capitalism, careerism and lust for power; the appalling conditions of unemployment, poverty and living conditions of the poor; the repression of grassroots struggles; the lack of service delivery and chronic mismanagement; the violence against women and abuse of children.
Given her analytical mind, that analysis would not have simply stopped at the Zuma years of greed and plunder, but certainly have interrogated the decisions taken that brought the demise of the RDP, the introduction of Gear, and the lurch into the grip of corporate capital’s free market, neo-liberal economy. She would certainly be involved in a bold Marxist discourse about an alternate socio-economic model; not only for our country but for Africa and the world.
Along with issues facing women and the poverty-stricken, this would include the planetary crisis of eco-system endangered by climate change and environmental destruction. What would have alarmed her too, would have been the rising threat of ISIS terrorism in the north of Mozambique, a consequence of the unbridled corporate exploitation of gas reserves, and the corruption that has stalked Frelimo and other liberation movements. She would be a leading voice in mobilising solidarity for the struggle of the people of Palestine.
I was at her side at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1967 at the very outbreak of the Six Day War, and she said she was holding thumbs that Nasser would defeat Israel. The Palestinian struggle was always close to her heart as an anti-Zionist Jew. Words escape one for what she would have said about the genocide being perpetrated by a fascist Israel and the impunity provided by the West. She would have been outraged at the arrogant support for Israel among white liberals, and their media, in South Africa.
She would not flinch for offering her support to anti-imperialist movements and leaders, including people such as Hugo Chávez and Ibrahim Traoré. She firmly understood the need for armed struggle where peaceful means were no longer possible. She admired revolutionaries who came from civilian careers, such as Georgi Zhukov, a worker of Red Army fame, Mao Zedong, an academic, Fidel Castro, a lawyer, Che Guevara, a doctor, Agostinho Neto, a doctor, Amílcar Cabral, an academic, General Võ Nguyên Giáp of Vietnam, a history teacher, and Samora Machel, a male nurse. She saw them as outstanding examples of civilians who became army generals or guerrilla commanders when history demanded it.
How would Ruth have responded to the challenges we face today? How does her legacy speak to us? Rigorously answering these questions is a particular challenge for the YCL and a young generation of would-be revolutionaries.
We must begin, as Ruth would have insisted, by striving to understand the concrete situation in all its complexities, driven by the need to address the people’s problems. This means learning from the working people and the dispossessed on the ground; tirelessly engaging in study and research; participating in questioning and debate through a collectivist approach; formulating theory; and remaining connected to the grassroots.
She would also have insisted, put ideas to the test through praxis – the unity of theory and action from which strategy and tactics is consistently developed and refined, in a dialectical materialist manner, working through contradictions. Practically speaking as of now the Party’s upcoming Red Caravan project, taking the Party to the people, understanding their conditions, mobilising and preparing the ground for the 2026 local elections is a test for our structures at the grassroots base. This is not merely a matter of electioneering for parliamentary representation above all else. As Lenin pointed out to “left communists” who argued against participating in so-called “bourgeois elections” and “parliamentarianism,” the real challenge was to use such elections to raise the consciousness of the masses and prepare them for the many forms of struggle on the road to socialism.
Whilst one cannot think for the dead, the living must carry on the struggle Comrade Ruth and her generation were so committed to, with determination, intensity and integrity. In so doing we must be guided by the ideas that energised and propelled her always seeking to “understand the world to change it.” Owing to Bantu Education, the learning of black youth in our country has been hampered. It is our duty to assist comrades of all ages who have not had the privilege of a decent education, helping them to discover the liberating experience of good books. Ruth was deeply involved in teaching workers at the Party’s night schools. We need to reintroduce this practice in our organisational work today.
To action, comrades!
Strengthen the organisational capacity of the Party and the YCL! Consolidate the unity and strength of the trade union movement! Build a broad left front! Rescue the ANC from its decline, ensuring it faithfully realigns with the revolutionary alliance! Educate and organise a new generation of youth within the YCL! Intensify our international solidarity work and deepen ties with our global allies!
The YCL faces a vital responsibility: to reach out to a new generation of young people from diverse backgrounds who are desperately searching for a bright future. As Lenin pointed out, the socialist outcome of the national democratic revolution depends on the strength of the working class. With the working class and the masses, the struggle for socialism will be victorious.
While we cannot think for the dead—it is the living who must carry forward the struggle—we must learn from Comrade Ruth First’s invaluable lessons and legacy. With determination, intensity, and integrity, we must continue the work she and her generation were so deeply committed to. In so doing, we must be guided by the ideas that energised and propelled her forward: “understanding the world to change it” and “asking questions and proceeding from the concrete analysis of the concrete situation!”
On the anniversary of her death, one can certainly declare that Ruth’s struggle to change the world continues. Her life is exemplary for men and women, young and old, who wish to understand the world and change it.
Ruth First’s Truth Lasts!
Johannesburg
15 May 2025
Ronnie Kasrils is a member of the SACP Central Committee, a founder member of MK, and a former government minister.
This talk is based on a lecture delivered to the Jack Simons Party School, 23 August, 2020
Further reading:
The Ruth First Papers are obtainable at http://www.ruthfirstpapers.org.uk/
For excellent biographical details, and further references see:
Ruth First, South African History Online: https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-first
‘Ruth First, validating dissent and building a democratic consensus’, Raymond Suttner, Daily Maverick, 28 August 2017
