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The Work of Ruth First in the Centre of African Studies

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The Work of Ruth First in the Centre of African Studies ' Review,VIII, 2, Fall 1984,159-172 The Work of Ruth First in the Centreof African Studies The DevelopmentCourse Aquino de Bragança and Bridget OLaughlin In March 1976,Ruth First wroteto Aquino de Bragançain Maputo:"Beside a revolution,doing a teachingjobis mediocre stuff." Shewas, at the time, teachingsociology at the univer- sity of Durham, and was thinking back on the visit shehad madeto Mozambiqueat the time of Independence. Ruth First and Aquino de Bragancahad come to know each other through their work as militant writers, each deeply involved in the strugglefor liberation in Africa. Aquino de Bragançawas living in north Africa, working as a journalist and doing specialjobs for the liberation movementsin the Portuguesecolonies of Africa. Ruth First wasiiving in political exile in London, after her releasefrom prison in South Africa. She was writing and lecturing on progressivestruggles in Africa and working for the African National congress. Ruth and Aquino irad common friends in the liberation movementsof Africa-Marcelino dos Santos,pio pinto, Ben Barka-and theycollaboratecJ in reportingon anti-imperialist Grl9l{4 [ìcsearch Foundarion ot SUNy 159 160 Aquino de Bragança& Bridget O'Laughlin strugglesand in analyzing the responsesof the imperialist powers.Both wereengaged in oneof the mostdifficult tasksof theliberation movements: simply getting the undistorted story into the media. As an editor of Afrique-Asie, Aquino had accessto a forum wherethe voicesof FRELIMO, PAIGC, MPLA, the ANC-voices unheardin the bourgeoispress- couldspeak. Ruth wasa frequentcontributor to AJrique-Asìe. With Independence,Aquino de Bragançacame home to Mozambique.Remembering the importanceof the Centrode Estudos Africanos (CEA) in Lisbon as a hearth for the developmentof nationalistthought in the Portuguesecolonies in the 1940'sand 1950's,FRELIMO leadershipwanted the CEA to existonce again, this time locatedwithin independent Mozambique and with a new focus on the liberation of southern Africa. The CEA was establishedwithin Eduardo Mondlane Universityin Maputo, and Aquino de Bragança wasnamed its first director.When he answeredRuth's letter in 1916,Aquino spokeof the work he wasdoing with a group of twelveyoung history graduatesto organizethe CEA. At that time they planned to do researchon the southern African subsystem,with emphasison Mozambicanhistory and econo- my. Knowing that Ruth First would be the ideal person to organizeresearch on the southernAfrica subsystem,and that sheherself wanted to get back into the front line of revolution, Aquino suggestedthat she might be convincedto return to southernAfrica to live and work in Mozambique.She came initially in 1977to direct a study on Mozambican miners in South Africa, and finally left Durham definitivelyin 1978to becomethe AssistantDirector and Director of Researchof the Centro de EstudosAfricanos. Tributes from her students at Durham make clear that Ruth's teachingwas never "mediocre stuff," but in Mozam- bique the thingsshe did so well-research, teaching,debate- assumeda much more direct revolutionaryforce. The discuss- ion of the researchshe directed was not confinedto academic corridors; it raised questionsof immediate import in the consolidationof the MozambicanRevolution. How will the Ruth First and the Development Course t6l accumulationfund for Mozambique'ssocialist development be generated?How can we extract ourselvesfrom dependence on South African capitalism?How does one bring the peas- antry into a program of socialistdevelopment? The cadresshe trained had to be working Marxists, making strategically informed decisionsevery day in their jobs- The DevelopmentCourse Outsideof MozambiqueRuth First wasknown principally as a militant in the strugglefor the liberation of South Africa, but during her years in the CEA South Africa was never the focus of her work. Rather, she put most of her time, and intellectualand emotionalenergy, into an experimentalcourse for Mozambicancadres: the DevelopmentCourse. The course was innovative in its objectives-to teach researchby doing it-and'in its methods and content. It was also extremely productive in researchresults. We have chosento centerthis retrospectiveview of Ruth First's work in the CEA on the Development Course because it was as Director of the DevelopmentCourse that sheorganized in the practiceof the CEA a distinctiveand revolutionaryconception of university teaching. The focus of the DevelopmentCourse was the processof socializing production in Mozambique. Since the starting point was a classstructure dominated by semi-proletarian- ization and small peasantfarming, the courseattended particu- larly to the problems of constructingnew forms of socialist agricultural production, state farms, and cooperatives.Stu- dents studiedthe developmentof liberation strugglesand the strategy of the enemy in southern Africa precisely because socializingproduction meant breaking with a regionalstruc- ture of dependencyon South African capital. The Development Course was taught collectively, without any set disciplinary boundaries, and with all teacherspartici- pating in all classes.The crucial step in the training of the student was a month of field researchmidway through the t62 Aquino de Brogança& Bridget O'Laughlin course',research done collectivelyby brigadesof teachersand students.The fieldwork wasalways preceded by sharpdebate on the theoreticalproblematic of the investigation--itspoliti- cal line-and followed by an equallytense discussion of the resultsand implicationsof the research.Together, Ruth and Aquino worked to recruit and organizea team of teacher- researcherscapable of sustainingboth the unity of perspective and the tension of contradiction that such a collectively organizedcourse required. There was not alwaysclarity outsidethe Centreas to what the DevelopmentCourse was all about,,and particularlyas to why Ruth First was putting so much energyinto it. In Mozambiquethere were thosewho thought that fieÌd- work in the countrysidewas simply an outlet for romantic infatuation with the peasantry,a sentimentaland populist attachmentto backwardness."Peasant-lovers," they said.In Ruth's casethis was rather ironic because,in fact, shealways saidthat thecountry gave her a permanentheadache. Walking from one far-flung compound to another, decipheringthe accountbooks of a cooperative,what pushedher on was the importance she ascribed to the transformation of peasant production. Among comradesin theliberation movement there was also some puzzlementas to the meaning of Ruth's work in Mozambique.They consideredstrange her intenseinterest and decided opinions about questionssuch as the policy of agriculturalmechanization in Mozambique.They thought she was withdrawing fronr the strugglefor South Africa. Yet Ruth First,herself, considered this period at theCEA to havebeen one of the most productiveand militant in her life, preciselybecause political struggle was directly integrated into her everydaywork of teaching,research, and writing. She consideredher contribution to theconsolidation of theMozam- bicanRevolution to bea directinvolvement in theliberation of South Africa. This was possiblebecause she had a clear political vision of her objectivesand a sharp analysisof the politicalcontext within which sheworked. The importanceof the DevelopmentCourse derived for hernot only from what it Ruth First and the DevelopmentCourse 163 was in itself, but from where and when it was located-in revolutionary Mozambique during a period of revolutionary conjuncturein southernAfrica. The DevelopmentCourse alteredfrom year to year as we experimentedboth with content and with forms of organiza- tion, but there were four common principlesthat always guided Ruth's direction of the course and that are, in fact, touchstonesof the continuing work of the CEA. Rather than attempt to provide a total inventory or chronology of Ruth's work in the DevelopmentCourse, we shallsimply describe how thesefour principleswere organizedin practice. l. Implementing revolutionary strategy is a matter of method of usingMarxist methodto investigateand analyze the concreteand constantlychanging situations which the revolutionconfronts and directs. The objectivesof the DevelopmentCourse were defined by the importance that Ruth attributed to scientificanalysis in revolutionarywork. Therewere those who thought that Ruth First wastoo critical,tough, even defeatist, in herdirection of research.This toughness,in fact, reflectedthe greatconfidence in Marxism that she had gained through long years of revolutionarypractice. She thought that a revolutionmust, and can,look directlyat its problemsin orderto resolvethem. The revolutionary cadre therefore needs to be extremely rigorousin its methodsof analysis. The objectiveof teachingtheory in the DevelopmentCourse wasnot to havethe studentsmemorize the basicconcepts and lawsof M arxismbut, rather,to teachthem how to applythese in theanalysis of theproblems they confronted in theirwork- in the harbor,in the Ministry of Agriculture,in cooperatives, in Party work. This did not mean putting aside the vast universalexperience of Marxism; Ruth thoughtthis literature to be essentialin teachingprograms precisely because it shows how to analyzeand how to apply analysispolitically. Ruth thought, however,that the studentshad only really masteredMarxist sciencewhen they knew how to use it creativelyin investigationof their own reality.Mozambican studentsmust be ableto usethe conceptof classin an analysis 164 Aquino de Brogança & Bridget O'l,oughlin of the classstructure
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