African
Revolutionary Writers, Part 4c
Ruth First
Ruth First was a revolutionary leader in her own right, of
the Young Communist League of South Africa, of the Communist Party of South
Africa before it was banned in 1950, of the Congress of Democrats, in all the
campaigns of the 1950s, and in the clandestine South African Communist Party,
before and after being forced into exile in the 1960s.
Ruth First was a lifelong militant of South Africa’s
liberation movement, and a martyr to its cause.
But also, Ruth First wrote seriously and profoundly about
other countries than her own, and about the African countries in general from
the point of view of a scholar, teacher and kournalist.
Aquino de Bragança, the Director of the Centre of African
Studies where Ruth First had been co-Director at the time she was slain by the
South African bomb, wrote after her death of “her personal struggle to unite political
militancy and intellectual work”. It is clear that she excelled in both ways.
Revolutionary leaders need to be readers, and also to be
writers. Ruth First’s work shows why.
Of the two linked items, the chapter from Ruth First’s book “Black
Gold” called “Workers or Peasants?” is the one that relates to Mozambique. Ruth
First’s work in other countries was not unrelated to the South African
struggle. This particular summary reveals in a way that becomes shocking, the
awful effect of South Africa’s predatory relationship with Mozambique on that
country as a whole, and on the migrant labourers and their families in
particular.
Ruth First draws some conclusions, which might at this stage
be challenged, concerning the co-operatisation of rural Mozambique as a
component of socialism, or more broadly, of “development”.
It might be that a better course would have been to simply
guarantee a market to the peasants, and then to let them organise themselves
within that secure market environment, whether through co-operatives or in
diverse other ways. In other words, there may have been more than the two ways
to go that Ruth First describes in her concluding paragraphs. Read the piece to
see what is meant here.
In the chapter, “The Limits of Nationalism”, from Ruth
First’s book on Libya, what is described most clearly is the class dynamic of a
state that rests upon the support of the petty bourgeoisie (or “petite
bourgeoisie” as First tends to call it). This is a class that typically
expanded very quickly after the independence of African countries, First says.
It is a class that wants to do everything according to its spontaneous,
common-sense bourgeois lights. First describes how in Libya, previously
existing organisations were disbanded, to be replaced by new ones created from
the top down.
There are aspects of this very fine piece of writing that
may apply to South Africa today, and which also to some extent explain both the
strength and the weakness of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya of the late Muammar
Gaddafi, still in evidence today after the intervention and bombing of Libya by
NATO, the sword of the “international community” (Imperialism).
Other books by Ruth First include “South West Africa”, 1963; “117
Days”, 1965; “The Barrel of a Gun:
political power in Africa and the coup d'état”, 1970; “Portugal's Wars in Africa”, 1971; “The South African Connection”, 1972 (with Jonathan Steele and
Christabel Gurney); and “Olive Schreiner”,
1980 (with Ann Scott). Earlier, Ruth First had worked for the Guardian/New Age,
under the editorship of Brian Bunting.
Ruth First’s own archive of her work is available for
viewing on microfilm at the Historical Papers Archive, located in the William
Cullen Library at Wits University, Johannesburg. The web site of this public
institution is at http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/.
- The above is to
introduce the original reading-texts: Ruth First, Workers or
Peasants? 1983, and Ruth First, Libya
- the Elusive Revolution, 1974.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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