Ruth First

Ruth First (born May 4, 1925, Johannesburg, South Africa—died August 17, 1982, Maputo, Mozambique) was a South African activist, scholar, and journalist known for her relentless opposition to South Africa’s discriminatory policy of apartheid. She was assassinated while living in exile.

First was the daughter of Latvian Jewish immigrants Julius and Matilda First, who were founding members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA); First herself would also become active in the party as she grew older. In 1946 she received a bachelor’s degree in social studies from the University of the Witwatersrand. While there, she organized the Federation of Progressive Students with Ismail Meer, Joe Slovo (her future husband), Yusuf Dadoo, J.N. Singh, and others, creating a radical multiracial student organization that opposed apartheid. From 1947 First worked for the progressive newspaper The Guardian, specializing in exposés of black labor conditions. In 1949 she married Slovo, and by 1954 they had three daughters.

After CPSA was banned (an apartheid-era legal action that was used to suppress organizations and publications and severely restrict the activities of a person) by the South African government in 1950, First was involved in organizing its successor, the underground South African Communist Party (SACP), which emerged in 1953. That same year she also was involved in the founding of the Congress of Democrats, the white wing of the Congress Alliance, a multiracial group of organizations that opposed apartheid. She edited the journal Fighting Talk, which supported the alliance. First also worked on drafting the alliance’s renowned Freedom Charter, which called for nonracial social democracy in South Africa, but she was unable to attend the Congress of the People gathering held in 1955, where the document was approved, because of her banning order—one of several such orders First was subjected to while living in South Africa. In 1956 First and her husband, along with Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, and more than 100 other anti-apartheid leaders, were defendants in a treason trial that lasted more than four years. By the end of the trial, all defendants had been acquitted, although many, including First, were subject to new banning orders.

In the state of emergency declared after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 and the subsequent banning of the African National Congress (ANC), First fled to Swaziland with her children, returning six months later when the state of emergency was lifted. In 1963 she was detained following the arrests in Rivonia of leaders of the underground ANC, SACP, and Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the military wing of the ANC. She was not accused with them but was detained under the 90-day clause, during which time she attempted suicide. After being released, First left South Africa with her daughters in March 1964 and joined Slovo in London.

In exile First worked actively in the anti-apartheid movement and did research and university lecturing. She wrote 117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation Under the South African 90-Day Detention Law (1965), about her own detention, and numerous other books, including South West Africa (1963), Power in Africa (1970), and Olive Shreiner (with Ann Scott; 1980). She also researched and edited books by well-known African nationalists: Govan Mbeki’s South Africa: The Peasants’ Revolt (1964), Mandela’s No Easy Walk to Freedom (1965), and Oginga Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru (1967).

In 1977 First was appointed research director of the Centre for African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, where she continued her research on migrant labour. In 1982 she was assassinated at the centre by a letter bomb sent by agents of South Africa’s apartheid government. Presidents, members of parliament, and ambassadors from more than 30 countries attended her funeral in Maputo.