Ruth First - Infinite Women

Born: 4 May 1925, South Africa
Died: 17 August 1982
Country most active: South Africa
Also known as: Heloise Ruth First

South African anti-apartheid activist, scholar and journalist Ruth First was born in Johannesburg to Jewish immigrants from Latvia and Lithuania. Her parents were anti-apartheid activists and founding members of the Communist Party of South Africa, and First followed in their footsteps in both regards. She became the first person in her family to attend university, completing her bachelor’s in Social Science from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946, with firsts in anthropology, economic history, sociology, and native administration. While there, she helped start the Federation of Progressive Students, and became acquainted with other student activists including Nelson Mandela, future President of South Africa, and Eduardo Mondlane, the first leader of the Mozambique freedom movement FRELIMO.
After university, First became a research assistant in the Johannesburg City Council’s Social Welfare Division. However, after a series of mine strikes in which several Communist Party leaders were arrested in 1946, First left the Division to become editor-in-chief of the leftist newspaper The Guardian, which was later banned by the government under the Communism Suppression Act and frequently changed its name to evade state oppression and censorship. As an investigative journalist, First exposed apartheid’s racial segregation policies. In 1955, she became editor of the leftist political journal Fighting Talk. She was also part of the drafting committee of the Freedom Charter, which outlined the core principles of the South African Congress Alliance of political organizations.
First and her husband were two of the 156 leading anti-apartheid activists affiliated with the Alliance accused in the 1956 Treason Trial, which would last until 1961, when all defendants were found not guilty following years of harassment by the state. Her writing was used as “evidence” to try to prove treason, and when a state of emergency was declared following the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, she was banned from attending meetings, being quoted by others, or publishing any work. After her husband was arrested, she fled with their children to Swaziland, though they later returned to Johannesburg in secret, and lived there in hiding.
In 1961, First traveled to Namibia, interviewing Africans in the region for her first book, South West Africa. She was denied access to archived materials, and when the book was published in 1963, it was banned and owning a copy was punishable by up to five years in prison.
After this trip, First was restricted from leaving Johannesburg for five years. In 1963, several leading activists, including Mandela, were arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. First was held without charge, in isolation for 117 days, the first white woman to be detained under the Ninety-Day Detention Law. During a search of her home, a copy of Fighting Talk, a monthly Communist magazine, was found; ownership of the magazine was punishable by up to a year in prison. Her 1965 book, 117 Days, recounts her experience in detail, including the interrogations and “pressure to provide information about her comrades to the Special Branch.” Although she was released on 7 November 1963, she was re-arrested without charges and imprisoned for another 27 days and released again on 4 December.
The following March, First went into exile, moving to London and becoming active with the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. Between 1964 and 1968, she travelled to Africa to study independence movements in Algeria, Ghana, Sudan, Nigeria and Egypt, and established her reputation as a well-regarded sociologist. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she also edited biographies of Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, and Oginga Odinga. She became a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and lectured at the University of Durham, as well as periods teaching at universities in Dar es Salaam and Lourenço Marques, Mozambique.
In 1978, she began working as the director of research at the Centre of African Studies (Centro de Estudos Africanos) at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique. In 1982, she was assassinated via a parcel bomb that had been sent to the university, on the order of Craig Williamson, a major in the South African Police. Williamson faced no consequences for her murder, even receiving amnesty in 1995 from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for this and other crimes.
In 1949, First married a fellow leading anti-apartheid activist and Communist, Joe Slovo, and went on to have three daughters, all of whom would help promote their parents’ legacy: Gillian Slovo published a memoir in 1997, Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country; Shawn Slovo wrote two films, A World Apart (1988) and Catch a Fire (2006), and Robyn Slovo portrayed their mother in the latter, which she also co-produced.