Ruth First: a tribute on the 40th anniversary of her assassination.

It is now 40 years since Ruth First was assassinated by a parcel bomb sent to her by agents of the apartheid state.?There was a rumour at the time that the postmark on the parcel was Trafalgar Square.??I do not know if this is true, but the man who organised the assassination, Craig Williamson, was based in London at the time.??In 1982, he was responsible for two events, the other being the rocket attack on the ANC Offices in Penton Street, Islington.??These two events in Williamson’s career were an indication that the apartheid regime, under PW Botha, was going to raise the level of their intimidation and murderous policies.??One crime was committed in London and one was organised in London.??Margaret Thatcher did not care.?She issued an invitation to PW Botha to visit the UK in 1984.??This was the background to the murder of Ruth First.

In 1982, it was usual for the apartheid regime to assassinate its female opponents.?During the 1980s that was to change, and many women were killed including some prominent ones like Victoria Mxenge and Dulcie September.?Women until that point had been protected by the “chivalry” of the apartheid regime, by the belief that they were less important.?The assassination of Ruth First was to prove that the apartheid regime no longer had those scruples, and would murder anyone that they considered to be a threat.?They became, as it were, an equal opportunities despotism.

The question that has to be answered is a simple one: what had Ruth First done to deserve such enmity, such hatred, such vindictiveness.?The answer lies in every aspect of her life.

Ruth was the daughter of Lithuanian Jewish refugees, fleeing the pogroms of Tsarist Russia at the beginning of the C20th.?She was born in Johannesburg in 1925, the daughter of Julius and Tilly First, who were founder members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), and she grew up in that intellectual tradition.?She graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946 where se became involved in the Progressive Students League because, in her own words, “the student issues that matter are national issues”.?It was through the League that she became friends with Nelson Mandela and Eduardo Mondlane, the founder of FRELIMO, the liberation Movement of Mozambique.

Ruth soon became the editor-in-chief of The Guardian, a radical newspaper, because during the Miners’ strike of 1948. A large number of CPSA members had been arrested, which affected the running of the newspaper.?Ruth’s editorship was so effective in investigating the effects of apartheid that it led to the banning of the newspaper.??Of course, it emerged in a new title, Fighting Talk, and Ruth continued in her editorial role.??In 1949, Ruth married Joe Slovo, a leading member of the CPSA, with whom she had three daughters, Shawn, Gillian and Robyn, all of whom were to make their own contributions to the liberation struggle.

IN the 1950s, Ruth became involved in the Defiance Campaign against Racist Laws, and was a founding member of the Congress of Democrats (CoD), the organisation set up because white people were not legally allowed to join the African National Congress.?The CoD became a part of the Congress Alliance.?Her most famous piece of journalism at this time was the exposure of the working conditions on the potato farms throughout South Africa.??This alone marked her out as someone to be watched by the security forces.

Ruth was one of the 156 people charged with treason at the infamous trial that began in 1956.?The trialists included her husband Joe Slovo and, of course, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.?After four years, the trial collapsed and all the trialists were acquitted.?This was at the time of the Sharpeville Massacre and the subsequent state of emergency.?Following the massacre, Ruth was arrested and banned which meant that she was subject to house arrest under severe restrictions, and could not attend meetings, be published or quoted.??Then came the launching of the armed struggle with Nelson Mandela as Commander-in-Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe.??The apartheid government responded with another round of repression.??Ruth was amongst those who were detained without trial, and she was held in prison for 117 days, which became the title of her world-famous book about the experience.

When Ruth was released, she came to London in exile, and it was here that she became involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement.?She also became an academic working first in Manchester and then at Durham University, and she went on secondments to Dar-es-Salaam and to Mozambique following independence in 1975.?This led to her taking up a post at the University of Eduardo Mondlane at the Centre of African Studies.?The University was named after her friend, who had been assassinated by the Portuguese Fascist and Colonialist government in 1964.??It was here that she was to meet her death.

Ruth was killed because she was a dedicated anti-racist, an effective opponent, an intellectual able to rally people against apartheid through her writings and her thinking.??Ruth was formidable.?But she was also very human.

Her house in Johannesburg was famous for its parties in which all races mixed, in which jazz was played on the record player.??As Ronald Segal said at her commemoration event, following her assassination, she loved beautiful Italian shoes.??She was a phenomenon.?Post-apartheid South African was diminished because she was not able to contribute to the transformation process, although their memories of her must have guided so many people in their own contributions.

She was loved and she made an enormous contribution in the destruction of apartheid.?That is her contribution to humankind.