RUTH FIRST

 68pp., illus., paperback, They Fought for Freedom series, Reprint, Cape Town, (1995) 2013

Journalist, academic and political activist Ruth First was a member of the underground South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. She helped found the South African Congress of Democrats, edited the journals Fighting Talk and New Age, and was on the drafting committee of the Freedom Charter. In 1956, Ruth First and her husband Joe Slovo were arrested and charged in the Treason Trial. All 156 accused were acquitted in March 1961. In 1963 she was arrested, kept in solitary confinement under the 90-day clause, released and immediately re-arrested. On her release she left the country with her children to join Joe Slovo in Britain, where she joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement, published several books and lectured at Durham University. In 1977, First was appointed professor and research director of the Centre for African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. On 17 August 1982, she was killed by a parcel bomb. During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, it was determined that the bomb that killed First had been put together by Jerry Raven on an order from Craig Williamson, a former spy in the South African security police. Craig Williamson denied being aware that the bomb was to be sent to First. The TRC granted both Williamson and Raven amnesty. This judgement was upheld when the Slovo family challenged the ruling.

Don Pinnock is the author of Gang Town; Gangs, Rituals and Rites of Passage; Elsies River and The Brotherhoods: street gangs and state control on Cape Town. He lives in Cape Town.