RUTH FIRST: A MEANINGFUL LIFE

RUTH FIRST: A MEANINGFUL LIFE

What does the life of Ruth First teach us? It teaches us the path for inner peace and quietness. If you desire peace of mind set values of what life means to you and live those values totally. Get consumed by a powerful moral idea. If you are genuinely living what life means to you the consequence is peace of mind! Only the honest know peace; the insincere and the cowards do not live in peace.

Reality is love; to live in love is to work for the good of all human beings. Live in love for all human beings and know peace of mind and body.

Since the dawn of the 20th century up until now we saw a new breed of apostles of peace; the psychotherapists.

One of those psychotherapists was Victor Frankl.

Victor Frankl tells us that we are always searching for meaning in our lives and that if we do not find meaning we live nihilistic existence. A nihilistic existence is the concept where you fail to live a life beyond yourself. That is the reason most people are not happy despite living lives of super luxury and wealth that is unknown in history. Our world is a basket case of sadness and glum: stress and depression is our daily existence.

If you do not know where you want to go, you would go to nowhere. We have visionary leaders who set out the path for others to walk in. What is life without visions of where we want to go to?

Ruth First was known for her simplicity, her strength of character, her naturalness, her audacity for hope and comradely attitude; a person of profound ideas. It is not easy to find a person with all the virtues that were combined in Ruth. It is not easy for a person to develop a character like hers.

She was deeply woman – a fully grounded woman. As a young woman, she was very stylish, beautiful and full of life. As an adult she retained her beauty as she grappling with the most difficult very hard questions of the world. She lived a full life and a life of purpose.

A butterfly she was! She was strikingly beautiful and attractive. As she grew up some would have considered the world of show business as her destiny. And the manner in which she carried her school work with fortitude, some would have said she should spent her life life of academia. Definitely she could have excelled in the world of academia. She could have easily become one of the greatest leading dynamos of education.

Ruth First lived her life as a total person. Her life embodied every aspect of human existence. At the pinnacle of her life was a burning passion for bettering the world. She was a social worker, journalist, librarian, revolutionary leader, freedom fighter, a champion of workers, teacher/lecturer and a beautiful woman.

She had a feminine tough all the way through. She blended all her strength and upbringing to become who she was.

She had a vision of love. True Civilization is love. That kind of civilization requires people to sacrifice for the collective and not just live for the individual alone. Whereas we do not know what the ultimate reality is, reality lies in accepting that at the spiritual level we are joined to one another.

She was a philosopher too. She believed in a natural society that has diverse colours. A multi-coloured rose garden is more beautiful than a rose garden with only one colour. Nature is wise in making people come in different colours and shapes. Love is joining, connecting and fellowship. Racism and tribalism disconnects us to one another hence makes us feel unloved, lacking in peace and joy.

Born into privilege on a legendary scale, Ruth First sacrificed his worldly possessions in the fight to secure a safe space for the beleaguered African people (the materially wretched poverty stricken people) during the height of apartheid in South Africa.

She had an ability to speak a language that resonated with the downtrodden, a deep historical shrewdness, and that incomparable sense of drama – these endowments defined her titanic personality.

She was a citizen of the notoriously racist apartheid South Africa. Ruth First lived her life outside the box. She went outside the norm in her guest to create a new world. It was a tough call.

Ruth First abandoned the pampered super luxury life of the White world to lead a difficult life of a freedom fighter; a fighter against apartheid, oppression and human suffering. It was with great detriment to disengage from a life of wealth to be with the poor Black people, whom apartheid government had officially rendered them as sub human apes.

Whites were super beings and the Blacks were inferior beings meant to be used and discarded. This was the accepted, approved and acknowledged culture of South Africa that ran almost fifty years.

I lived in those times and I know what I am talking about. In the universal scheme of things in South Africa there was no solid denial or repudiation of this human arrangement. It was accepted, it was given and considered the way of life; how things should be. Even the media; newspapers, magazines, radios, television stations promoted this human arrangement.

The Blacks accepted, everyone accepted. The White person is god. And god s/he was; worshipped daily in the workplaces, city pathways, everywhere.

Ruth First altered this kind of society through mental force and went against its waves. She was a master. Masters create universes. The creative avenue is the mind. In order to bring something into manifestation, you have to first have the ability to develop the mental picture of it. This is the arena of visionaries. A visionary is a leader. Ruth First was a leader. She constructed an ideal society in her mind and put her life across to realise that mental picture.

Ruth First was a visionary and a great strategist. She worked closely with Nelson Mandela and others. As young people they were driven by a consuming passion; the eradication of apartheid.

She was one of the most feared personalities. The Apartheid government put her at the top list of the most dangerous people on earth. She became a target. She was identified by the apartheid government as the engine of ideas that were stoking revolution. And finally the apartheid government got her.

The Apartheid government had the most sophisticated intelligence system in the world. That intelligence system revealed Ruth First as the dynamo of the forces that has the ability to collapse apartheid system. His husband Joe Slovo was feared but not feared in the way Ruth was feared. This is clearly shown in the fact that the apartheid government when it wanted to demoralise the forces opposing it they did not go for Joe Slovo but Ruth First. They killed Ruth First not Joe Slovo. Apartheid government was evil and notorious but it never killed people for fun.

Apartheid government only resorted to killing people when its leaders were driven to the wall. In other words the killing of a person was done at the last resort. Ruth First was killed because she was dangerous person.

She was bombed. The death of Ruth First represent one of the darkest moments in the history of the world. Here was a person who dedicated her life for love based society and sacrificed personal comforts to attain that world; and she got killed in such a brutal manner.

She is now physically dead, but her spirit loom in South Africa, Africa and the world.

In the height of famine in Ethiopia, Michael Jackson brought together a group of fellow stars to sing the song of all ages: We are the World. In part, the song goes as follows:

There comes a time when we heed a certain call

When the world must come together as one

There are people dying

And it’s time to lend a hand to life

The greatest gift of all

We can’t go on pretending day by day

If you want to bring about change in your society you must be prepared to stand up and fight for what you believe is right. It is empty noise making to just express your opinions, you must be prepared to back them up with force, fight for them and if needs be die fighting for them.

In his seminal book, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill talked about how liberty is maintained by those who are willing to fight and die for it. Thomas Paine pretty much said the same thing in his book, Common Sense.

Throughout human history, those in power seldom give power to the weak without the weak fighting and dying for it. Those who are afraid to die fighting for freedom and justice are invariably led by other people.

India will always bow in humble gratefulness to the dogged persistence of the Great Mahatma Mohandas Karachi Gandhi. The American Blacks have the sacrifice, fight and doggedness of Martin Luther King Jr. to thank for the freedoms and respect they now enjoy. Slavery would still have been a lucrative business in human merchandise, had Wilberforce and others done nothing to get it abolished.

Europe today and the rest of the world would still have been grovelling under Hitler’s millennialist jackboots and megalomanic vision of a Third Reich, if Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin and their allies, did not mobilize their men and materials to fight this grossly perverted vision of social engineering personified in Hitler. Six million Jews were reduced to cinders because they were persecuted into doing nothing in the face of a monumental evil.

I wrote this book as part of a project to highlight the role played by Ruth First in the life development of South Africa. Initially I proposed that a dominant road in South Africa’s capital city Pretoria be named after Ruth First. The proposal succeeded and today we have such mayor road entering Soshanguve and Mabopane named after Ruth First. The Road leads the traveller into the Tshwane University of Technology.

I am an existentialist author and was featured in The New York Times as well as the Reader’s Digest in 2014. I was also a top contributor on News24.com and on a weekly basis was presented as the most popular columnist by News24.com editors. I won the Gold Seal Award for Research Excellence.

I write and consults on leadership, management, politics, and psychology and have a master of a business degree (MBA) and has worked at various universities in South Africa.

Through my research and publishing company BestAfricans.com we financially support schools and skills centers in rural and peri-urban areas in South Africa that have many desperate needs.

However I am first and foremost an existential therapist. The reports, articles, and books that I write are written in the context of existentialism.

My obligation to myself is to be honest and describe things as I see them. My function as a social observer is to describe phenomena, as I see it, and, hopefully, that description enables individuals to better understand it than they did before.

CHAPTER 2

It is easy to talk, to be idealistic. What is difficult is to take action, do what you supposed to do. In other words walk your talk. Bold, courageous people give themselves to improve the world whereas cowards merely talk about the problems of the world.

Horace has said it well: seize the day for tomorrow we shall die (Cape Diem).

On Tuesday afternoon of 17 August 1982, under the bright clear blue sky, Ruth First was in her second floor office at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. She was with her close friend and confidante Bridget O’Laughlin, the director of the Centre of African Studies, Aquino de Braganca and the fellow African National Congress (ANC) Pallo Jordan.

Ruth, who was director of research at the Centre, has just concluded hosting an international conference that was attended by various scholars, researchers and freedom fighters across the world. In the office they were chatting leisurely and Ruth was beaming with joy, happiness and laughter. She had those feelings of satisfaction, worthiness and peace after some great work has been accomplished.

She was going through her incoming post. She picked one letter with the letterheads of the United Nations on it. She has done lot of work with the United Nations. And so mails from the UN were something common but something that often meant new work in the making and development of the world. And so she opened the huge envelope, talking and laughing, and suddenly there was a blast, an explosion ripped through and shook the office. Windows shattered, a hole was torn in the wall, the steel desk was cut in half and the concrete ceiling cracked.

O’Laughlin, Jordan and de Braganca were injured, but Ruth, who was bending over the desk, took the full force of the blast and was dead. The letter bomb that had killed her sent shock waves around the world.

In a police bar in Pretoria South Africa two years later, Captain Dirk Coetzee, commander of a hit and death squads, told Rapport newspaper reporter Jacques Pauw that after the killing, super-spy Craig Williamson had said to Coetzee: ‘We got First.’ The plan to murder Ruth had been made at the police-owned farm Daisy, next to Vlakplaas, the base of apartheid Section C1 counter-insurgency force, the base where plans were made to kill people who were opposing apartheid.

The unit assigned to do the job was Section A of the Security Police under Brigadier Piet Goosen, the man who had interrogated Steve Biko. On this farm there was a laboratory where Goosen and his colleagues manufactured the bombs; this time when planning the killing of Ruth they placed a bomb in an envelope stolen five years previously from the offices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Swaziland.

In other words the planning for the killing of Ruth First took five years.

After the bomb exploded, Dirk Coetzee said he remembered it was a joyous celebration. The policy had a great occasion, dancing naked and laughing in great excitement and joy, giving each other high fives.

‘The men drank beer and brandy and Coke and patted each other on the back. All agreed that had dealt the enemy a terrific blow.’

Some people ask, why revisit the past, why not let sleeping dogs lie? They would seem to suggest that instead of talking about a past that is over and gone we should focus on the present, for it is only the present that we can do something about. We cannot change the past so it would seem a waste of time and energy talking about it. That line of reasoning seems logical.

The problem is that the past is always with us. The reason why we study history, not forget history, is that the mistakes of the past are repeated in the present so by understanding why we made those mistakes perhaps we can stop making them. In order to initiate a dialogue with posterity, we are not keeping quiet.

The popular Jordan B. Peterson psychologist noted that; “there is a relationship between you and history. When you study history you think you are studying a record of events in the past, but that is no right. What you are studying is the circumstances that gave rise to you as a being. And unless you understand your history in every way you possibly can, then you are an incomplete creature. You don’t know more enough to move forward”.

If society’s practices are not just our function is to fight for what we believe is just and not accept to live with the unjust society. Human beings are structured in such a manner that whereas what is just is not readily ascertainable they must strive after the just.

Human beings seek revolutions but live through revolutions without recognizing that they are living through them.

Perhaps a detailed intricate and intimate account of the killing of Ruth First is one offered by her daughter Gillian Slovo. Here is her description:

“Like the roads around it, the university where Ruth worked had also been rechristened. It was named after a Mozambican, Eduardo Mondlane. Mondlane had never lived to see his party, Frelimo come to power. One day in 1969, in exile, in Tanzania, he had collected his mail and taken it to a friend’s house and opened it. Someone had sent him a book. When he turned its first page a bomb was triggered, killing him instantly.

The university that bore Mondlane’s name was a set of sixties characterless, two-storey, buildings off the road that leads to the beach at Machinetta which had a garden in an internal courtyard that gave the place a modicum of charm. Her office was on the second floor. She climbed the stairs, careful that her high heels did not slip against the over-polished red tiles, and went to her office.

The room was not a fancy one: two windows overlooking a decrepit patch of ground; a couple of steel desks; some second hand filling cabinets. There were two people waiting for Ruth: Pallo Jordan, a comrade from the ANC; and Bridget O’haughlin, an American colleague.

They were soon joined by a third; Ruth’s boss, Aquino da Braganza, who was carrying the post he’s just picked out of his cubby hole. He came in, complaining jovially that although he was the boss, Ruth always got more mail than him.

“That is because I, unlike you, write letters, Ruth shot back and added that she’d been in too much hurry and hadn’t even checked to see if anything was waiting for her. Now, with time to spare, before the party was due to begin, she went to fetch her mail.

She returned soon afterwards, carrying her own bundle. She stood by one of the windows sorting through. Pallo was sitting nearby, at a table, Aquino Opposite him, Bridget slightly to one side.

‘Look at this’, Aquino said, stretching across the table, holding a letter out of Pallo.

It was at that moment that Ruth must have slit open the buff UN envelop that had been sent to her. In doing so, she broke the circuit that had been carefully laid inside. The bomb went off.

The men who had planned her death had taken no chances: the force of the explosion was powerful enough to blow out the window, sending half of the industrial air-conditioning unit thudding to the ground.

When the phone rang, my father [Joe Slovo] was at home in Maputo. He was working at his makeshift desk in the house he and Ruth shared inside the Mozambican ministerial compound, opposite the presidential palace.

They had recently been moved in: things were hotting up, the Mozambican government had said; it was better that the two have proper security so, reluctantly, they’d shifted out of the elegance of their Mao Tse Tung high-rise apartment with its sea views, and into this over-large concrete box whose only charm was the spoken rhythm of its street name: Rua Azarua.

My father never told me what he was doing when the phone rang. He did tell me, however, that soon as he picked it up, one of Ruth’s colleagues, a friend to both of them, spoke out. His voice was shaking as he said: ‘Joe, come quickly’, and followed that up with a curt, ‘something has happened’.

That was all but it was more than enough. Dropping the receiver Joe ran out to his white mazda and, without bothering to check it for bombs, he turned the key and drove straight to the university.

There was a commandeered jeep outside the university block, busy ferrying Ruth’s three injured companions to hospital. Joe vaulted up the stairs weaving through a shell-shocked crowd. A finger pointed him in the right direction. He was moving more slowly now. He saw an open door. He went closer.

Her feet, clad in the t-bar, tan high-heel shoes that had been her favourite, poked out from the ruins of the room. My father was no stranger to violent death. The angle and the stillness of her legs told him everything he needed to know. He went no further”.

The murder of Ruth happened just after she had organised a large gathering of intellectuals and freedom fighters across the world. The conference was organised by the United Nation. The theme or mood of the conference was apartheid South Africa. The caption in larger letters read: THE TIME IS NOW THE CHOICE IS CLEAR! TURN ON THE LIGHT!

And so speaker after speaker make their mark against apartheid. Our strategy should not only to confront apartheid, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen; to shame it; to mock it: with our art, our music, our literature and our stubbornness. A luta Continua! E victoria e certa!

That meant, “the struggle continues, victory is certain”.

A luta continua was the rallying cry of the FRELIMO movement during Mozambique’s war for independence. The phrase is Portuguese and was used by FRELIMO leader Samora Machel to cultivate popular support against the Portuguese colonial dominance and oppression.

And so the conference was over and in the style of Ruth she was preparing a social party to celebrate the success of the conference. It was typical of her to organise parties. Those parties were a form of networking and deepening of ideas through social drinks in a highly suggestive social setting.

CHAPTER 3 EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT TO ADULTHOD

Each human being is a biological organism. Upon birth that biological organism is presented with a pre-existing society and a physical environment. The child’s biological constitution responds to the physical and social environment he finds his self in. In the process he formulates a behavior pattern, aka personality.

The individual’s behavior pattern, his personality is formed during his childhood; it is generally in place by age twelve. Thereafter, it is difficult to change the individual’s personality.

Ruth’s grandfather arrived came to South Africa in 1904 from Bauske, Courland, in Latvia. He was a tailor named Moses Ruben Fürst (his surname was written as ‘First’ by a customs official when he landed in Cape Town). And somehow adopted and went by that name. He kind of like it and his family liked it too.

They were starting a new life in a new world and the thought of a new surname suited their conditions.

Moses Ruben First started to apply his skills as a tailor and the process of time he started to achieve modest success. As he thrived the thought of bringing his family to South Africa appealed to him.

His son, Julius, arrived in Johannesburg three years later at the age of ten, with his mother and brother. Ruth’s mother, Matilda (Tilly) Leveton, was born in Lithuania and came to South Africa in 1901 at the age of four.

Moses (grandfather to Ruth) as he succeeded in business the more he was drawn to other world, mostly the world of politics and struggles of the native Africans.

In 1923 Julius was elected onto the committee of the Communist Party of South Africa. By 1925, with Julius in the Communist Party, the Firsts were in the forefront of revolutionary politics in South Africa.

And 1925 was the year Ruth was born. She was born on the 4th of May.

The family and society that the child is born into gives him all sorts of feedback as to who he is and or should be. By the time the child begins schooling at age six his self-concept and self-image is in place. The self-concept and the self-image once formed becomes the lenses with which the individual looks at everything in his world; it is like a pair of seeing glasses that one wears and uses to see the rest of the world; one seldom sees the world as it is but always sees it with the coloring of the glasses that one wears.

Somewhere in 1936 Ruth began attending the Jewish Government School in Doornfontein.

A classmate, Adele Bernstein, clearly remembered Ruth’s arrival in the school. She was ‘a skinny girl in a navy gym and white shirt who wore her fuzzy hair short. She was always neat, impeccably dressed and a bit of a class above us’.

Not only did Ruth come from a privileged background but she come from a super-rich family. She lived in super luxury. It is hard to imagine how she crossed that line to find herself living and co-existing with the poor and the downtrodden Black people. What light shined on her path? How did she make that ditto?

We know generally humans once high up in the apex of natural life find it hard to relate with those who are down. There is simply no sense of affinity for the poor and the super-rich and the super wealthy. They live in different world and have different ways of relating to the world.

Life is a mystery that we can never understand fully. There are forces at work in our lives that engrave us and put us in paths that we never we can ever trot. We are simply at the mercy of forces that are somewhat larger than our limited sphere of existence. Generally most people who are at peace of who they are get connected with these forces that are above our realm. They find themselves inspired. To be inspired is to have inspiration. To have inspiration is when you are connected with spirit, you are in-spirit. When that happens you become a mere a channel, a vessel.

At the age of 14 Ruth joined the Junior Left Book Club with Berman, reading extensively and taking part in public debates. Ruth devoured books about South Africa and the Soviet Union. By the time she matriculated from Jeppe Girls High, her final school, in 1941, Ruth had all the makings of a ‘blue stocking’.

Jeppe Girls High was the crème of the crop; crème de la crème. The forerunner of the Jeppe Schools was St Michael’s College, founded as an Anglican private school on the corner of Commissioner and Crown Streets in Fairview, Johannesburg.

The School’s name had changed to Jeppe High School for Boys and Girls. Over the years the enrolment had increased steadily so that by 1912 even the new premises had become inadequate. The boys had always outnumbered the girls and after pressure from the Governing Body which was against co-education, it was decided that the girls should have their own school.

Miss E L Cummins, who had joined the staff of the school in 1904, was to be the first headmistress of the new girls’ school.

The separation of boys and girls started at the beginning of 1919. The Girls’ building had been planned during the economically stringent years of the First World War and construction had started in 1918, the last year of the war. Under Miss Cummins, the rocky, rubble-strewn terrain was transformed into acceptable grounds and the bare veld into playing fields. By the time Miss Cummins retired in 1930, the Hall and East and West wings had been added, with a library and laboratories, the gardens had been terraced and the trees in the upper and lower grounds planted. The swimming pool was opened in 1929.

It was a great school of super luxury, and the girls indulged in that luxury.

In 1941 Ruth passed her matric. She has already planned what she was going to do with her life. As a young school girl she used to travel the country and began to be radicalized by the poverty, hunger and disease she witnessed. She developed desire to help overturn what she saw.

She was going to dedicated herself to social interest. She wanted to study the social sciences. And she was going to fight for the poor. The poor in South Africa strictly meant Black people.

To make herself connected with Black people she also registered for Zulu language. The Zulu language is the most spoken African language in South Africa. In the urban areas, factory floors and mines it is the language bids all Africans together. The language is not only mode of communication but a medium of African cultures, history and experience.

To learn the language is to learn how Africans live and how they relate with the world around. Ruth submerged herself in that kind of world thus transcending her person and being of service to humanity.

She realised humans are the same and the notion of separateness is a social construct, not real. The issue of skin colour is superficial. Racism is a taught concept based on belief that the race of a racist is superior.

There is indeed one human race and that human race comes with different colours. After discovering that reality her mission was to remove the imposed social constructs and return humanity to an oneness state. But she did not realised know how hard and somehow impossible that task would be, a mission that would make her a pariah and finally take her life.

Having enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand, the whole world that she was sensing was opened up to her. She was free and saw the world was a stage and clay to be moulded to her envisioning.

And here we see yet another stellar attribute of Ruth. She was living in those times when women programmed not to value education and the direction of life. But here we find Ruth going through the process of schooling from start to finish without any thought of dropping out. She had character and fortitude to stay on course to realise her dreams of advancing the world and improve it. Setbacks, obstacles and criticisms only encouraged her to keep going.

She had a goal and was consumed by the goal to see it accomplished. Her life as we look back and review it seems set on a pre-determined course.

At the University of the Witwatersrand she was about to discover the comradeship and politics that were to set the course for the rest of her life.

At the university she immersed herself in student societies, debates, mock trials, general meetings. She succeeded in her social science degree and, many years later, attempted to add a diploma in librarianship. Her academic records show an exceptional ability in English and African history and little interest in other languages (she scored 49 per cent for Zulu and 32 per cent for French).

After leaving university, Ruth took up a job in the research division of the Johannesburg City Council.

In August 1946, more than 100 000 African miners went on strike and the confinement of the office became too much for her.

The strike 12 August and lasted approximately a week. The strike was attacked by police and over the week, at least 1,248 workers were wounded and at least 9 killed. The police attacked the workers with batons, bayonets, and gunfire outside the mines and in the mines. Police brutality reached a bloody climax on a peaceful march from the East Rand to Johannesburg on Tuesday, 13 August. Police opened fire on the procession and a number of workers were killed.

The strike was viewed as a crucial moment in South Africa's development

She remarked:

When the African miners’ strike of 1946 broke out and was dealt with by the Smuts government as though it was a red insurrection and not a claim by poverty-stricken migrant workers for a minimum wage of ten shillings a day, I asked for an interview with the [Council] director and told him that I wanted to leave the department. Then he asked: ‘Have you another job?’…‘A political job,’ I said.

It takes fearless, bold militants to go to the streets and mobilize to bring about social change.

When I was in graduate school I concluded that professors serve the powers that be in society and really are not critical of the status quo; if they criticize the gatekeepers of society they could lose their jobs or become marginalized. Thus, they keep quiet as their country and world burns.

Ruth First belonged in the world of action, where things are done, not Ivory tower where folks just talk and do nothing. If a person is doing what he has aptitude for doing, likes doing and believes serves his interests he tends to put out incredible energy to doing it.

Her mission was to tell the story of the miners. She was to become the greatest propaganda machine of all the various forces opposing apartheid. I don’t think the liberation movement would have gone very far this time without Ruth First.

This was the time when Ruth met Joe Slovo; a soldier who had just returned from the war. He had been born in Lithuania and had immigrated to South Africa with his parents when he was nine. His father had worked as a van driver in Johannesburg and his mother, at times, had hawked goods from house to house.

Joe was forced to leave school early in order to earn money and had worked as a shop clerk. When war broke out he joined the army and, while he was up north, he became an active member of the Springbok Legion, a radical servicemen’s organisation. After demobilisation he joined the Communist Youth League.

He and Ruth soon became political comrades, trading heated debates and sharing political platforms.

They often argued so often and yet remained committed friends and committed lovers. “She was the intellectual”, Joe Slovo use to say, “and I was the working-class man – but the attraction grew”.

What Joe Slovo meant with this statement is that Ruth First was a person of ideas, and him, Joe Slovo was a person on the ground implementing those ideas.

Ideas and revolutionary propaganda was the purview of Ruth First. She created paths on which revolutionaries should travel on. And she was very systematic in whatever she does. Ultimately it is ideas that make revolutions. It was through the ideas of French Philosophers that the French Revolution was actualized.

These are the reasons why she invited disdain from apartheid rulers. Ideas motivate people to action, give them passion for living.

As people in a love relationship, Ruth and Joe shared a flat and in 1949 they married.

They had three children. She had three daughters: Shawn, Gillian and Robyn. She raised all her daughters positively. Today all of them are contributing to the world in remarkable ways.

Shawn Slovo (born 1950) is a screenwriter, best known for the film A World Apart, based on her childhood in South Africa under apartheid. She wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film Catch a Fire (also a historical film about apartheid), and for the 2001 film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. In the late 1970s she served as Robert De Niro’s personal assistant while he made the films Raging Bull and The King of Comedy. She also made the screenplay for Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight.

Gillian Slovo (born 1952) is a writer, journalist and film producer. Her first novel, Morbid Symptoms (1984), began a crime fiction series featuring female detective Kate Baeier. Other novels in the series include Death by Analysis (1986), Death Comes Staccato (1987), Catnap (1994) and Close Call (1995). Her other novels include Ties of Blood (1989), The Betrayal (1991) and Red Dust (2000), a courtroom drama set in contemporary South Africa, which explores the effects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country (1997) is a moving account of her childhood and her relationship with her parents.

Robyn Slovo (born 1953) began her career writing and producing for the stage. She segued to reading and story-editing for film and television, and in 1993 became executive in charge of all development for BBC Single Drama/Films. While at the BBC, she worked on a diverse slate of feature films, telefilms, and television dramas.

In 1997, Robyn joined George Faber and Charlie Pattinson in forming Company Pictures. She was head of film at the U.K. production company, remaining with Company for a decade. Whilst there Robyn worked on Shane Meadows’ early films 24/7 and Room For Romeo Brass along with producing Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar starring Samantha Morton.

Ruth First was a student of Karl Heinrich Marx popularly known as simply Karl Marx (1818-1883), a fellow Jew. Karl Marx had pointed that philosophers has so far interpreted society and it is now time to not interpret society but actually go ahead to change it.

Plato, Aristotle and others were all philosophers who grappled with ideas of the world, human existence, how humans should live and how humans should interact with each other.

Karl Marx wrote many treaties all seeking to address the human condition of suffering. He noted the fact that humans live in societies and the system that binds people together is oppressive, thus leading to lives of sufferings. And so he pointed the root cause of human suffering as emanating from government systems. If we can fix the government system and gear it working positively for people then we will go a long way in alleviating the human suffering. The dominant government system that Karl Marx was living in in 18th century Europe was capitalism. And so Karl Marx studied capitalism and analysed it in whatever way possible. In all his analysis he discovered its systematic problem.

He went on criticising capitalism though a series of writings and exposing its wrongs. He highlighted how the system is favouring the few while the masses are condemned to live lives of suffering and sorrow.

As he went on criticising capitalism obviously in the process his attacks included the politicians who keep the system going. And so he was finally forced to live Germany and settled in Britain.

According to Karl Marx, the most important issue confronting us is economic. We have limited economic resources in the world and a few persons, the bourgeoisie corner that resources for themselves and get the rest of the people to work for them as their wage slaves.

The owners of factories, the capitalist class have billions of dollars and do not know what to do with that money whereas the masses can hardly have two good meals a day, and do not have access to creature comforts of this world.

Some people may decide, right now, to go visit any part of the world, make plane reservations and tomorrow are on their way to that place, whereas some people are born in a decrepit town and live there most of their lives and do not get to see the rest of the world. This, according to Marx, is unfair so let us organize the proletariats of this world and use them to overthrow the bourgeois ruling class, appropriate their capital and have the workers run the factories.

The workers are supposed to pay each other equally, for, to Marx, from each according to his skills and to each according to his needs. Communism is the last stage of human civilization, Marx told us.

Society began in communalism and would return to communism. In primitive communalism the people cooperated with each other for mutual help. Thereafter, a few persons used raw power to enslave the rest of the people and thus came into being a slave society.

Naturally, the contradictions of masters and slaves created conflict in society so there was war. The thesis of masters and the anti-thesis of slaves led to war and the resolution of that war, synthesis, was a new kind of society, a feudal society.

In feudalism there were still masters and servants so there was still conflict; the conflict led to war and synthesis, a new society, one that Marx called the Bourgeoisie. Here, the moneyed classes rule the factory workers and the result is social tension, conflict and war.

As Marx sees it, the result of this new class struggle, thesis and anti-thesis is synthesis, a new form of human social organization where there are no masters and followers and all would be equal and friends. Communism is that new society where all helped each other and worked for each other’s good. This way, Marx’s dialectical materialistic approach to history stood George Hegel’s philosophy of history on its head.

When you try to accomplish the social idealism of Karl Marx you quickly realize that it takes leadership skills to do so and that not all people have leadership skills. Not all people can have the same requisite skills. And by extension, no people can be the same and share the same things. This put the communist notion of “the people shall share” at odds with reason”.

A few persons always emerge in the workers’ paradise as leaders and corner more power and wealth to them than the masses has. This is how communism became once it was implemnted.

Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, Fidel Castro’s Cuba were all as unequal in the distribution of power and wealth as in capitalist societies, so communism does not seem to be the answer we are looking for, or is it? Some say that communism has not been tried so we do not know if it is doable.

Karl Marx worked as a journalist writing for several newspapers, including American newspapers.

Later he moved to Paris and associated himself with French socialists. His association with French socialist eventually got him into trouble and thereafter he devoted his attention to writing on socialist matters. Harassed by German and French authorities, Marx fled to London where he spent most of his time in the libraries reading and writing hisbooks, and been supported by his rich friend Freidrich Engels and other well wishers.

Karl Marx and Frederic Engels collaborated in writing the Communist Manifesto (1848), a sort of Bible for Communist revolutionaries.

I have basically spelled out what Karl Marx believed in. Now let me explore communism and socialism: his thought systems.

In Communist society there would be no more social classes, oppressors and oppressed hence no need for struggle and change. In past societies, there were oppressors and oppressed.

In primitive society there were slave owners and slaves; in feudal society there were aristocrats and servants; in bourgeois society there were the moneyed owners of the means of production and poor folk, the bourgeoisie and the workers.

In communism there would be no more struggles, an end of history kind of situation and stability reign in the land. This claim is a puzzle. How could human nature characterized by competition suddenly change? Of course Marx was wrong, for in the Soviet Union a ruling communist class emerged and oppressed the workers.

State officials became the new employers and oppressors of the people.

V. I. Lenin and his Bolshevik Party of Russia told folk that the emergence of a powerful state was a temporary phenomenon that would last until the workers are ready to start managing their factories. The state was supposed to wither away as the workers take control of their work place.

Seventy years later, the monolithic state was still going strong. In 1991, finally, the Russian communist party self-destruct.

There is nothing wrong with idealizing the imperfect world we live in. The danger lies in taking ideals for reality.

The world is not going to be a perfect place where perfect equality reigned in the land. Equality is in spirit not in matter. On earth, people will remain unequal, some poor and some rich.

Wishing for a classless society, as Marx did, was a pipe unrealistic dream. What is feasible and doable on this earth is to make inequality less pernicious and offensive. We cannot eliminate social inequality for as long as people live in different bodies.

Hegel, a good German visualized his Germany representing the culmination of all the good ideas of the past. Germany would be the country with the best ideas.

We all know how that turned out, don’t we? Hitler based his views on Hegel (and Nietzsche and my beloved mentor, Arthur Schopenhauer) and thought that his savagery is the cutting edge of ideas on how to rule the human polity: kill the weak and unproductive; conquer weak countries and expand your country.

Karl Marx expanded Hegel from mere philosophical cogitations and transformed his ideas into his understanding of economics. Now, we are told that all is economics; economics shapes peoples thinking. If you are rich your ideas of life are shaped by your wealth and if you are poor your idea of who you are is shaped by your poverty. Some of this is so true that it needs to comment but that is deceiving for life is more than economic determinism.

Marx talked about what he called material dialecticism, how society is characterized by struggle of economic interests for the control of society.

In primitive society a few persons became slave owners and wanted to use slaves to enrich themselves. Slaves and free men fight it out and the result is the emergence of feudal society.

In feudal society the aristocrats dominated the serfs and the result is political tension. Their wars led to the emergence of bourgeoisie society.

The bourgeoisie owe their rule to owning capital, the means of production. The capitalist class dominates the working class, the proletariats. Both classes fight it out and the result, in Marx’s thinking, is socialism, a situation where wealth is controlled by all members of society.

Marx was an idealist; his thinking is like Plato’s thinking. Needless to say that the world is not a place of ideals and perfection. In the real world some people work harder than others; some people have more intelligence than others and therefore all things considered some would be richer than others.

Not all of us would be Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. If you make the mistake of trying to equalize wealth you destroy incentive to work hard and instead of Steve Jobs working 20 hour days to come up with his apple computer he would goof around serving food in a restaurant, as he did as a waiter until he discovered his calling in computers and threw himself into it, as if driven to discover what he did. Unfortunately, his underlying paranoid personality and working too much killed him young.

For our present purpose, communism is a utopian philosophy and is not going to happen anywhere. It came into being by force in Russia, China, North Korea and Cuba and wherever else it came into being. It was maintained by force.

Remove force and men would look after their self-interests. As Adam Smith tells us in his Wealth of Nations societies become wealthy if the people are allowed to pursue their interests, as they define them to be, not as someone told them they should see them as.

Marx’s political theory could be said to be as follows: let a few persons seize government and use force to redistribute wealth so that there are no gap between the rich and the poor. This would mean dictatorship.

V.I. Lenin hoped to seize power with the aid of his Bolshevik political party and rule on behalf of the people and then give that power up and let the people rule themselves.

Lenin’s successor Joseph Stalin killed over 35 million Russians to make sure that he stayed in power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, I believe that Thomas Jefferson said that?

I believe that Karl Marx’s problem was that he was not an economist but felt free to talk about that subject. Real economists of his time like Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus realized that people have different skill sets and that there is nothing that you can do about.

A mixture of capitalism and socialism, is the best political economy so we must finally have it, as they do in the best governed countries in the world, the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Of course, we must allow folks to seek wealth but insist that they use their wealth to serve public good.

The desire for profit, as the Scottish economist, Adam Smith, delineated in his seminal book, The Wealth of Nations (1776) is still the best motivation for hard work.

Be that as it may, we also know that there are some goods and services that we must provide to all citizens regardless of the utility of capitalism.

We must provide all citizens with education at all levels. The wisdom of mixed economy: taking some aspects of socialism and mixing it with capitalism to take advantage of what is good in both economic approaches.

When thesis and antithesis fight the result is not the complete wiping out of one but the synthesizing of both. Ideas are synthesized and that is how ideas grow.

There is no doubt about it; capitalism is the most productive economic system known to man. What needs to be done is to tweak it, as they have done in Scandinavia. We must allow capitalists to make all the money they want but have them pay taxes and that money is used to provide all children with education at all levels, university included, and gives all people publicly paid health insurance and provide all with opportunities to compete for jobs.

We need a competitive-cooperative world and a social democratic polity; we do not need pure capitalism or pure socialism but a combination of the best attributes of both economic theories.

As such, we have to combine opinions on capitalism and socialism that seem useful for organizing our human polity.

Many who crossed the path of Ruth First attest that in her social and political engagements she was forthright and her messaging was clear, crisp and clear. She did not speak bombastic English but clear English that even if you have difficulty with the language you will still be able to understand.

CHAPTER 4: WORKING WITH NELSON MANDELA

Political ideology is not science; as a result it is not an issue for folks to debate its correctness or lack thereof. Political ideology is the individual’s view on how his political world ought to be organized. An ideology says that government ought to be this or that way. This is a value statement, a preference; the individual is entitled to his preference but his preference is not science and thus may not appeal to other persons.

People with similar political ideologies gather and form political parties. Each political party tends to fit a specific political ideology.

In 1951 Nelson Mandela launched a defiance campaign against the apartheid government. Nelson Mandela then called for Whites to support it. The following month Ruth attended a meeting in Johannesburg which had been organised in response to this call. The results of all these was the formation of South African Congress of Democrats with Ruth as organiser.

She was elected onto the drafting committee of the Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter is the blueprint of a one united nation – a one nation. The Charter begins by saying: South Africa belongs to all people who live in it. This is the world that Ruth First wanted to create. She was driven personality – driven to make it a reality.

As the organiser of the Freedom Charter she asked all people from all colours to send in their dreams and visions for a new South Africa. The responds was overwhelming. An extraordinary range of demands started to pour in. According to New Age newspaper, writing just before the Congress began, ‘for months now the demands have been flooding in, on sheets torn from school exercise books, on little dog-eared scraps of paper, on slips torn.

Ruth First was working with Yusuf Cachalia, Rusty Bernstein, Walter Sisulu, Duma Nokwe and Pieter Byleveld – most of them were banned at the time. It was a great task, one which Ruth enjoyed very much. She read the heartbeat of South Africans and realized despite the hate people have a desire to live lives based on love.

According to Yusuf Cachalia, the demands would arrive from their offices and would be given to Ruth for preliminary sorting and condensing into coherent statements. “She was the journalist, you see,’ he explained, ‘there were a lot of demands and she could digest them fast and present them to the committee”.

It has a selfless work. We all know how good and peaceful we become when we do work that is our passion. We have fun and satisfaction. This was the state Ruth was in; a fabulous time of her life characterised by joy, happiness and satisfaction.

The Freedom Charter was the labour of life – a true blueprint for a world above racism; hate and hatred.

After the Freedom Charter was adopted unfortunately things got worse. The forces of hate gathered more strength. Apartheid was enforced and Blacks were forcefully removed and dumped faraway places.

The main basis of the forceful removals was to ensure that Blacks should not live close to Whites, people who are special and superior.

So after the Freedom Charter, the opposite happened. Ruth was hunted down and pronounced to be a target. Her actions were catching up with her. Eventually she was forced to live South Africa on a forced exit visa to England.

People like Nelson Mandela were stopped from making speeches. Ruth First was the first person to write the life story of Nelson Mandela.

In exile, in 1965, Ruth First edited a collection of Mandela’s speeches and the book, published by Heinemann in London, was entitled The Long Walk to Freedom. That was the title of Mandela’s land mark phenomenal autobiography.

With the book, Ruth First held many conferences, spoke in seminars and international gatherings appealing for the release of Nelson Mandela.

Ruth First and Nelson Mandela had heated arguments through their time working together, however they shared most views.

Some of those views and values was the issue of non-racialism. To both of them the concept of race was anathema to her; as far she was concerned, there is only one race, the human race.

Molecular biologists tell us that all human beings, regardless of their color, are genetically 99.9% the same. The .1 % difference in them account for such things as skin color, hair type and other apparent differences. That is to say that biologically, people from everywhere on planet earth are more similar than dissimilar.

As far as biology is concerned, there is no such category as races. In so are that there are races, it is social and cultural construct, not a natural one.

All human beings belong to the same animal species. A species are animals that can reproduce with each other. Europeans can reproduce with Africans and Asians but cannot reproduce with gorillas, for though gorillas look like human beings they belong to a different species.

Our completion and perfection lies in union with all humanity. This is the ultimate struggle. The ultimate liberation movement is one united human race. Whether we like it or not, a universal human being is emerging. The future world is one people with one culture and we might as well deal with that fact and stop wasting every ones time by fighting the inevitable.

Reality is what it is; it is not for us to determine it; our role is to adapt to it. We are one human race and must live with one another, as loving and forgivingly as is humanly possible. Everywhere in the world, people, be they black or white or oriental, pursue worth, significance.

To be civilized is to have social interests as ones motivation. Social interest is a capacity inherent in all humans but must be developed and trained. It comes when a person has an inner sense of connectedness and continuity with others and with all of life and is felt by others. Social interest is a highly developed, natural compassion for all people.

What is one surviving for, what is one living for? One should to stand up and fight for the type of society one desires.

True Civilization is love. That kind of civilization requires people to sacrifice for the collective and not just live for the individual alone. Whereas we do not know what the ultimate reality is, reality lies in accepting that at the spiritual level we are joined to one another.

A multi-coloured rose garden is more beautiful than a rose garden with only one colour. Nature is wise in making people come in different colours and shapes. Love is joining, connecting and fellowship. Racism and tribalism disconnects us to one another hence makes us feel unloved, lacking in peace and joy. We are at root unified spiritual light; we are one consciousness, the consciousness of one shared self with one shared mind.

Speaking about love in these contexts is to enter the world of Ruth First. It is to aspire for that Eldorado world hat Ruth First lived for and died for. The idea of oneness as preached by Nelson Mandela had its seeds from Ruth First’s lap. The Black young man Nelson Mandela and the White woman Ruth First were close friends in the height of apartheid South Africa. It was love that broke the solid iron chains of apartheid and saw them together. In oneness we are the same and coequal.

Some human beings are very inquiring. They want to know who other people are. Some children want to play with children who look different from them. These kinds of people enthusiastically seek out those who seem different from them to relate to them. They feel more at home when they are connecting to people from diverse experiences and colours.

Although some people’s comfort zone and cosiness is to be with those who are like them, some people find comfort in being with seeming different individuals. Ruth First, growing up in apartheid South Africa, for example, preferred to be with people (such as young Nelson Mandela) from so-called races. She had Africans, Indians, Coloureds, and Chinese, as her friends. She found it boring to be with those who were only from her background.

The relevant point is that there are human beings who have voracious interest about other people. These are people who are leaders and guides; teachers of love. Just like in a war, there are few soldiers who are determined and become generals that motivate others to keep on moving and refuse to settled down under the heavy spirit of defeat.

Many people are not that adventurous, certainly not big deal of trying to relate to people from outside their race. Having friends from outside your race is certainly stepping into a strange world where you may not have the cultural skills to circumnavigate that more foreign world. Most people have social skills to survive with stimuli springing from their in-group members but are at a loss relating to cues from outside their group.

Normally, the average person is driven by fear and wants to look unto some person who appears fearless to guide him. To lead is to be out front beckoning other persons to follow you. To lead means that you have a dream, a vision of where you want to go to and start moving in that direction and those around you judge that where you are going is good for them and follow you.

Generally, people have easy sense of connectedness with members of their own group. Why is that the fact? It is because of our history. But the world is changing and evolving. You have to make efforts to relate to those from outside ones group.

In the past (our history where we evolved) imagine an African trying to relate to a German or a German trying to relate to a Chinese, it is difficult for them to form a sense of oneness, given their colour and cultural divides.

Until recently, most people did not even know about other people, Africans, for example, had no contacts with Europeans and Asians.

People lived in particular parts of the world and adapted to the exigencies of their world. They evolved particularistic cultures that enabled them to cope with the demands of their world. (Culture enables people to adapt to their world.)

People who adapted to the temperate world of Europe had a particular culture; those who adapted to the tropical world of Africa evolved a particular culture and so on.

The run of humanity identify with those like them in colour and culture. It is easier to relate to those who look like one. The majority of mankind feels comfortable with, as they say, “their kind”.

But the fact is, we cannot completely avoid other people, for complete separation from other people would result in our death; we are always connected with people but may not actively affirm it. Proximity leads to cultural diffusion, which is taking place at a greater speed than at any other time in human history.

In the future, it is clear that there will emerge a universal culture that is not anything like today’s particularistic cultures.

It takes extraordinary sense of security and positive self-esteem for the individual to not care whether other people liked or did not like him, accepted or rejected him. Very secure persons with strong positive opinions of themselves reach out to all people for friendship.

For our present purposes, some people seek connection mostly with those who look like them, their so-called race, and fear the sense of aloneness they feel when around those not like them. For example when Nelson Mandela was at university, one white guy in the lecture class upon Nelson Mandela sitting next to him jumped and went to seat in another place.

On the other hand, some people seek out the company of those not like them and in connecting with these seeming strangers feel more joined and peaceful.

Ruth First certainly felt more at home, peaceful and happy when she was with people from diverse races. If she found herself in a room with whites, blacks, Indians etc she felt very comfortable, but if she was in a room with people that all look like her, she felt bored and antsy and got out of the room. She needed all humanity to feel truly joined, unified and complete hence peaceful and happy.

Today the apartheid has been removed but the psych and mentality is still very much party of the consciousness of South Africa. It is not South Africa. Racism, division, hate and hatred have taken new dimensions; have deepened practiced at the hidden deeper level not outwardly. That seems to be a worse dangerous situation than before where it was obvious and you can deal with it. When you have an open sickness you can deal with that sickness. But when that sickness takes roots and deepened it is hard to dislodge it.

Is there any possibility that racism can be transcended? Can humans live without the consideration of skin colour? Is there any thread of possibility that a post racial world can be accomplished?

When you see people you recognize that you can do whatever you want to do to them. Other people’s lives are in your hands. The choice is yours what you do to and with people.

What does this mean in real life? It means that it is up to you to give value and worth to people, or not. Look at the person in front of you. You can decide to value that person and see him or her as worthwhile or not.

If you choose to you can see me as nothing and treat me as such and no force external to you can stop you from doing what you want to do to me; and I can do the same to you.

Because it is us who give us worth we can also decide to withdraw that worth from each other and destroy each other.

Before nations go to war they withdraw value and worth from their enemies; they make them out as savages and that gives them permission to kill them without feeling guilt or remorse.

For example, white racists chose to define Africans as unintelligent and sub human beings and treated them as such. Having defined black folk as mere animals they undertook to use them as people use mulls and horses to do farm work. They did not feel guilt or remorse from doing what they did for to them they were merely using animals.

The point is that it is when people value and demand each other that they treat each other with respect. Our individual worth is a social construct; it is each of us and all of us that decide to value each other. It is human beings who decide to give value and worth to each other.

It is up to you to do with people as you wish, and it is up to them to do to you as they wish. Why don’t all of us above to work for each other’s interests. Is not working for each other’s interests the ultimate way of life – the ultimate civilization?

What all these add up to is that since our lives are in each other’s hands we ought to earn the respect of all the people we encounter every day of our lives. If you see a person you ought to do only those things that would make him feel that you love and respect him? Why?

It is because if people feel that you love and respect them they tend to love and respect you. And if they love and respect you they are unlikely to harm you. Only serving other people’s interests helps us stay alive.

Whites have spread so much lies about Africans that you often wonders how human beings could sit around making up lies about their fellow human beings and writing and publishing about those lies as if they are true!

Accept all human beings regardless of where they come from or their skin colour, and treat all people as the same and coequally; love and respect all people regardless of their race and gender.

In every moment in our lives we are presented with choice making, to be human or to be mere animal; to be human is to love and respect all people and not take advantage of people.

In 1963 Ruth First was involved with underground movement together with Nelson Mandela to change tactics from protest to sabotage. The result of this change was the birth of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing.

CHAPTER 5: MARRIAGE

The marriage of Joe Slovo and Ruth First was the meeting of minds. Both individuals had a firm resolve for freedom of African people. Both lived to see a South Africa that is one great nation of a diverse humanity. Their house, where they lived in Johannesburg reflected their vision. During the days of apartheid White people were prohibited to sit across the table with African people – because those are not human but sub human, kind of apes. But Ruth First and Joe Slovo threw parties and invited Africans mixed around freely with no restrictions. Their house was always encamped by the police. The purpose being to stop such kind of parties where according to the apartheid government “it is demeaning for a White person to walk or sit along with a Black person”.

Ruth First was racing with destiny.

Joe Slovo’s parents died when he was a young chap and he grew up in the milieu. Joe Slovo was part of the family of Ruth first. He was more like brother to Ruth. And he used that masculine character to help and lead the way. That is how things are in real life. A woman is not considered so much even she can be that much. But the fact of the matter was that Ruth was a highly resolved person and Joe Slovo provided that support – validated her. Ruth First was a woman of fortitude. She never wanted to become masculine with masculine characteristics. She remained soft, petite and beautiful butterfly. She was at peace with herself. Her body was totally calm and radiating with all round youthfulness.

How do folks who are at peace attain that peace? I think that it is when a person is totally truthful about his or her life.

During the 1950s and 1970s the dominat leaders of Communism in South Africa were Ruth First and Joe Slovo.

Ruth First and Joe Slovo were staunch communists and they saw the whole apartheid government as unjust and needed to be overthrown. Therefore their reasoning was there must be a revolution. Of course the apartheid government banned and outlawed the Communist Party of South Africa. But the ANC of Nelson Mandela was never banned or outlawed. And testimony of the fact that the ANC initially adopted a posture that the apartheid government never saw as a threat.

Ruth First main thrust was conferences, seminars and articles. She was not a leader who operated by moving the masses, but she convened conferences for political discussions, held seminars in her home where all various people congregated and discussed politics. She was editor-in-chief of the Guardian Newspaper and used that role to influence opinions and make a lot of people who opposed the Apartheid government lean towards her purview. She threw social parties and in those social happy gatherings people’s attitudes were reshaped.

In her book “Every Secret Thing, My Family, My Country” Gillian Slovo, the daughter of Ruth and Joe Slovo described what was going on in their family home: “it had its origins long ago in South Africa when they had stood, with their comrades, on our rolling lawn and talked in code about what their next move should be”.

Gillian later told BBC that:

“One of my first memories, aged six, is of my mother coming in and handing me a bag of crisps and saying, “Now you can have this.” As a journalist and political activist she had led a campaign against the exploitation – and sometimes murder – of black workers on a potato farm, which led to a boycott of potato crisps. To my parents, politics and political events were integral to their personal life.

They stressed the need for social justice: to not stop looking, or acting just because you yourself might be comfortably set up”.

One great remarkable thing, something that is special about Ruth was that she was deeply woman – a fully grounded woman. As a young woman, she was very stylish, beautiful and full of life. She threw parties and she invited all people. Because these parties were multi-racial in an apartheid caste society, the police would often be around.

Ruth First was instrumental in the training and development of African shop stewards. One of those shop stewards was the young John Nkadimeng.

Regarding Ruth First, John Nkadimeng says: “she used to encourage me a lot to say: Look, I am going to talk to you about such and such a thing, such and such a problem, and I need you to point out some of the problems which you see out of what I am saying – if you disagree with me don’t be shy, speak”.

Ultimately, Ruth was editor of the hard hitting journal called Fighting Talk. She was radical but in the confines of playing it cool.

Her role was profound and powerful. She entrenched values of integrity and dedication to the cause. She advancing the struggle for liberation of South Africa she did not sought to transform herself and assume masculine characteristics. She used her natural feminine soft touch. She was a settled woman satisfied in her own skin, a daughter (her parents were one of the founders of the Communist Party of South Africa), then at Wits University she was very attractive girl. She was fully turned out, no matter the setting, so smart was her bearing with pretty clothes and outwardly lady like demeanour.

“A new vigour crept into everything she did… she was so pleased of herself” – Gillian Slovo

The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) was established in 1921 with close links to Moscow. Its initial membership was largely white but by the 1930s it started to establish overtures and links with the ANC following involvement in organizing African workers. It was disbanded in 1950 under threat of the government’s suppression of Communism Act.

Though Communist Party was banned they wanted to bring it back. Gillian Slovo (Ruth and Joe’s daughter) describes it as follows:

“Both Ruth and Joe were involved in starting it up again, this time underground, heading deeper into a secret world where excitement and danger were to run side by side. It was a cosy, inbred universe they occupied. To make sure their cover wasn’t blown, membership was by invitation only. They learned conspiracy in those early years: no meeting was ever pre-advertised, or held in the same place twice running. Phone calls were short and cryptical, conversations often taking place not in the lounge but by a distant garden fence”.

They were running a secret organisation. They became pariahs and were to be that way the rest of their lives.

CHAPTER 6: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RUTH FIRST’S BOOK: THE BARREL OF THE GUN

People have contempt for those who are easily intimidated by threat of force and coercion. People do not respect those who beg for mercy; they have contempt for them. As Thomas Payne observed (in his book, Common Sense) the tree of liberty is watered with brave patriots’ blood.

If someone sticks it to you stick it back to that person and that way s/he learns not to stick it to you again. As long as you are easily attacked and defeated and you cry for mercy no one is going to have mercy for you; other folks would always try to enslave you.

Those enslaved and colonized must fight their enslavers and colonizers and defeat them in the battle field for their humanity to be rehabilitated in their eyes.

What is history but how groups of human beings attacked and defeated other groups and then other groups attack and defeat them. Human living is characterized by offense and defense and defense and offense. Human beings are predatory animals.

After Ruth was forced into exile she went into deep depression. She was morose and bitter that she has been banished from the country of her birth, the country that she loved. The results of this came a book that she started working on soon after she settled in England.

The title of the book is The Barrel of the Gun. The Barrel of the Gun reveal the hopeless state Ruth found herself in dealing with apartheid forces. She presented a thesis that the only way to deal with apartheid was through the barrel of the gun.

Politics has been defined in many ways. Carl Von Clausewitz (On War) defined war as politics by other means; implicit in his definition is that politics is war by other means. Politics is war for in it folks are engaged in deciding who gets something and who does not get something in the human polity; the decision regarding who gets what or not is war.

Ruth in the Barrel of the Gun says: I define normal politics as war by cold means. In normal circumstances people are engaged in cold war; that is, no one is being killed in normal politics; however, when people, in the political process begin killing people they are now engaged in hot war politics. In hot war politics folks are killed for some people’s political gains.

If someone declares hot war on you, you better recognize what he is doing and fight back on his terms, not through normal cold war politics where no one is killed. We are now in the politics of hot war in South Africa. People had better awaken to what is going on in their land. The time for fooling around is over.

If you are attacked you have an existential obligation, if you want to stay alive, to defend your life. Since the best defense is offense you ought to employ offensive measures against those attacking you. Violence is the last resort in solving human conflicts when reason and diplomacy fails.

Politics after all is war by non-violent means, politics is cold war and when that fails becomes hot war, so holding your opponent hostage is perfectly legitimate tactics and strategy in political battles. The human spirit is restless and cannot be permanently suppressed. Sooner or later, the defeated reassert their will to power. If you do not have military power all you do in the world of politics is mere noise making.

A leader is like a military officer (that is why it is generally preferred for presidents to be ex-generals in the military). He identifies an objective to be conquered by his army, say, a hill (a country) and asks his men to follow him and they go get it. He must have clarity of objective for the men to follow him in achieving it. (As the popular adage says, if you do not know where you are going to you will get nowhere.)

Ruth First wrote: I do not want to hear you pontificate on politics; what I want to hear is what you are doing to bring your idea of what society should look like into being. Words are cheap, what changes the world are deeds.

You do not forgive the bully for to do so is to give him permission to keep hurting you. Forgiveness does not stop bad behavior. What you do is go get a big club and use it to whack the bully on his head; you hit to split his head open.

You stop the criminal by punishing him. The anti-social personality is deterred not by love and forgiveness but by force.

The moral of the story in the Barrel of the Gun is that if one gives other people hurtful effects they are entitled to defend themselves. She asserted that a person should to know where he stands on the ideological continuum and be able to fight and die for his preference. Merely blowing hot air on politics is the infantile behavior of a cowardly people who are unwilling to make a political stand and fight to death on its behalf.

If society’s practices are not just our function is to fight for what we believe is just and not just live with the unjust society. If a person must be alive s/he ought to evaluate the nature of society and decide what constitutes a just society and live it and if it is absent in his/her world work to bring it about; s/he must not just tolerate unjust society just so s/he survives.

Between 1964 and 1968 Ruth travelled the new African states, studying military coups and the failure of independence struggles in Africa.

In her academic work together with her field researchers she interviewed hundreds of mine workers, visited their farms and villages, and collected songs, history and stories. Their findings were published after Ruth’s death as a book called Black Gold.

CHAPTER 7: RUTH FIRST, THE HERO

Years ago, I read Donald Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal” (New York: Random House, 2006; 384 pages). I even went to a workshop based on the book. Eventually, I saw the book and the workshop based on it as another American flimflam; I dismissed it and moved on with my life. Thereafter, I did not pay more attention to the Donald.

But later his ideas finally grew wings and put him in the White House. Ideas if pursued and upheld over a long period of time become reality.

Please do not dismiss the powerful political insights that Hitler showed in his book, Mein Kampf (my battle) for those ideas led him, a homeless boy sleeping at homeless shelters in Vienna and Munich to master Europe. Ideas have power, my friend.

The famous American mythologist, Joseph Campbell wrote a series of books called The Hero with a Thousand faces. In the books he explored the nature of mythologies and talked about what he called the journey of the hero in initiating new mythologies.

The hero, as he saw it, is a member of a group who, for whatever reasons, acutely perceives the problems of his group. Most people are not even aware of their group’s problems. Some persons are somewhat aware of the problems of their group. May be, every once in a while a unique individual acutely perceives the problems of his group. That person generally has the problems of the group and is motivated to find answers to their problems.

The individual, the hero to be leaves his group and journeys to far off places to go search for solutions to his personal problems and for his group’s problems, hence the journey of the hero. He searches far and wide and eventually finds the answers he is looking for.

The hero then returns to his group and teaches the answers he found. Initially, the people do not accept the answers he gave to them for they are not even aware that they have problems! In the long run, however, folks accept his answers for finally due to his teachings they see their problems and the solutions for them.

Before he died in 1987 Joseph Campbell noted that mankind has been brought together; in the past each race lived in its corner of the world oblivious of other races and developed its culture differently but those cultures are no longer adaptive to a unified world.

In the final analysis, people from all over the world interact and a different world would result, not the world small minded racists’ desire but a new world.

CHAPTER 8: TOWARDS THE FUTURE

Many years ago, while at graduate school, I read Milton Freidman of the University of Chicago, School of Economics. Upon digesting his thesis I concluded that he was wrong.

He presented unemotional and indifferent analyses that showed us the benefits of capitalism but at no point did he factor in the moral equation. Apparently, morality does not matter, what matters is the detached workings of economics.

Any analysis that takes what matters most in human affairs, morality, out of the equation is not only wrong but bad. A civilized person cares for his society and not just for his pockets, as the god forsaken apostles of unmitigated free enterprise preach.

Pure reason, without morality, leads to the death of human societies. Pure reason, for example, tells me that Adolf Hitler was rational in most of his beliefs; his books, Mein Kampf and Table Talks, were written from pure reason but eschewed morality.

For example, Hitler pointed out that in nature the powerful lord it over the weak; he reasoned that powerful Germans ought to lord it over their weak neighbors. He pointed out that the powerful drive the weak out and takes over their territories, as white Americans did to Indians, and argued that since Germans are more powerful than Slavs that they ought to push the Slavic population of Eastern Europe into Asia, to behind the Urals and take over Eastern Europe.

Are these rational ideas or not? Of course, they are rational ideas but they lacked human sympathy.

Friedman’s philosophy, for that was what he was espousing while calling it economic science, is that the free market is the best type of economic system there is. In his numerous writings, he takes his reader through Adam Smith’s logic, presented in his 1776 seminal book, the Wealth of Nations, to David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx and, of course, notable American economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith.

No one has the right to deliberately aim at degrading other human beings, as white folks do to black folks.

The only worthy attitude towards another human being is effort to uplift him.

Anger at the white man, at apartheid, colonialism and neocolonialism is not going to change anything. What would change things are love and forgiveness and moving forward with the right attitude. Any philosophy that is not based on love for all people and shows people how to serve their mutual social interest is devilish.

The most important issue confronting us is economic.

It is clear to me that capitalism has advantages and so has socialism. A mixture of capitalist and socialist economy seems the best way to go.

We have limited economic resources in the world and a few persons, the bourgeoisie corner that resources for themselves and get the rest of the people to work for them as their wage slaves.

The owners of factories, the capitalist class have billions of dollars and do not know what to do with that money whereas the masses can hardly have two good meals a day, and do not have access to creature comforts of this world.

Social democracy, as practiced in the Scandinavian countries, seems the best political economy. Here, all children’s school fees are paid by the public, from kindergarten to university and vocational schools (while also allowing private schools to exist for those who seek such schools) and all citizens are given publicly paid single payer health insurance.

A few other public goods should be provided the people but beyond those each person is left to shift for his self.

Capitalism gives people incentive to work hard and make profits, so allow it to incentivize the people; let people make money but take part of their income, taxes, to fund agreed upon social programs.

What is called maturity is the ability to live with one’s imperfect self and tolerate other people’s imperfect selves.

The realistic, mature person does not reject people just because they are imperfect; he does not hope for people to become perfect before one accepts them. He accepts people as they are, imperfect.

People are not going to become perfect so if you hope to accept and love them only when they are perfect you are going to wait forever, for they are not going to become perfect.

You accept and love people as they currently are, imperfect and not wait for them to become perfect before you accept and love them. In the language of Carl Rogers, you accept people in an unconditionally positive manner.

Exploitation of one group by another group does not last; societies based on exploitation of people always decline and fall.

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

----- Nelson Mandela

“I am in the world of knowledge and know from relating to hundreds of students that there is no difference between the races and between the sexes; therefore, all people must be given equal opportunity to compete for every position in society. If a woman is qualified to be the president of the country she must be allowed to do so without regard to her gender, the same goes for black people”

----- Ruth First

Ruth First saw a problem and dedicated her life in trying to solve it; Nelson Mandela did the same thing; that is what leaders do; they do not just talk and write loads of rubbish on leadership but do something about problems.