African
Revolutionary Writers, Part 4c
Ruth First
Ruth First has a unique place in this series. She 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 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, among these revolutionary writers, Ruth First
wrote seriously and profoundly about other countries than her own, and about
the African countries in general.
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, “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 Muammar Gaddafi,
still in evidence today when Libya is under the bombing of 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).
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/.
Please download and read these texts:
Ruth First, Workers or
Peasants? 1983 (4922 words)
Ruth First, Libya
- the Elusive Revolution, 1974 (5141 words)
Further reading:
Eduardo Mondlane, The
Struggle for Mozambique, 1969 (6938
words)
Amilcar Cabral, The Weapon of
Theory, 1966
(7710 words)
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