First, Ruth (1925-1982)

Scholar, author, and activist, Ruth Pirst is best known for her investigative journalism and anti-apartheid activism in South Africa, Mozambique, and the United Kingdom. First's dedication, intelligence, and progressive politics made her an asset to the anti-apartheid movement.

Born Heloise Ruth First, she was the daughter of lulius and Matilda First, who immigrated to South Africa from Latvia in 1906. Her parents were politically active socialists and founding members of the South African Communist Party (SACP). Because of this, First grew up surrounded by the leftist political debates among different races and classes that took place in her house. In 1942, she attended school at the University of Witwatersrand in lohannesburg, South Africa, where she was a member of the Progressive Youth Council, secretary for the university's Young Communist League, and founding member of the Federation of Progressive Students. First graduated in 1946 with a bachelor's degree in social studies. In 1949, she married loe Slovo, a communist labor organizer and lawyer, with whom she had three daughters.

Throughout the 1950s, First served as editor of the Guardian, a progressive newspaper, wrote numerous journalistic pieces about the conditions of migrant laborers, and focused on documenting the campaigns of the anti-apartheid movement. First published most of her scholarly activist writings in this newspaper, in addition to the Congress Alliance journal, Freedom Talk, for which she was also editor. During this time, she also founded the Congress of Democrats—an organization made up of white South Africans who opposed apartheid—and served on the drafting committee of the Freedom Charter, the document on which the new constitution of South Africa is based.

Because of their political organizing, First and her husband were both arrested for treason in 1956, but were acquitted after a 4-year trial. In 1963, First was [Page 331]arrested again, along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and other members of the SACP and African National Congress (ANC), for her membership in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the militant branch of the ANC. This time she was sentenced to 90 days in prison, and served 117. Upon her release, First joined her family in exile in Britain where she remained active in the fight against apartheid by holding seminars and public gatherings to support the ANC and the Communist Party. She also published several books on politics, revolution, and labor, including a memoir of her days in prison.

From 1972 until her death, First worked in acade-mia as a research fellow at the University of Manchester, a lecturer on the sociology of underdevel-opment at the University of Durham, and as the director of a research training program at the University Eduardo Mundlane in Maputo, Mozambique. On August 17, 1982, First was assassinated by a letter bomb believed to have been sent by South African police. She continues to be remembered for her commitment to racial unity in a divided South Africa, her passionate involvement in the anti-apartheid movement, and her support for the liberation of other African countries.