Ruth First's Early Life and Activism
Ruth First was born into the struggle against apartheid. Her parents, Julius First and Matilda Leveta, were Latvian and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who co-founded the Anti-Apartheid Communist Party in South Africa. She attended the University of Witwatersrand alongside Nelson Mandela and Eduardo Mondlane, the latter becoming the founding president of FRELIMO in Mozambique. First married Joe Slovo, a key figure in the ANC's military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe.
Her Work as a Journalist and Author
First edited banned newspapers and wrote the detention memoir 117 Days. She compiled Mandela's speeches in No Easy Walk to Freedom and edited works by Govan Mbeki and Oginga Odinga. Her most famous book, The Barrel of a Gun (1970), analyzed political power and coups in Africa.
Staying in Ibadan During the Nigerian Civil War
In 1968, during Nigeria's civil war, First arrived unannounced at the University of Ibadan. She stayed with Selina Molteno of the African Studies Department and her husband Robin Cohen. During her two-month stay, she met with Northern Nigerian political and military leaders and visited Susan Wenger (Adunni Olosa), the German-born Pan-Africanist who developed the Ifá religion and helped build the Osun-Oshogbo Grove.
Teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam
In 1975, First joined the University of Dar es Salaam, a hub of African intellectualism under President Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa philosophy. She taught political economy, engaging in fierce debates with scholars like Walter Rodney, Issa Shivji, and Mahmood Mamdani. She described one seminar as "slaughter at a seminar," where "liberal ideology" was "murdered in public."
Her Assassination by Parcel Bomb
On August 17, 1982, First was killed by a parcel bomb delivered to her office at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. The bomb was specifically made for her by the apartheid regime. Her husband Joe Slovo returned to South Africa in 1994 and served as housing minister until his death in 1995.
Legacy and Plea for South Africa
First's life exemplified Pan-Africanist struggle. The article pleads that South Africa, which produced such revolutionaries, should not be abandoned in its current xenophobic state but rehabilitated and embraced by the continent.
