' 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 :"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 .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 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 of Mozanrbicansociety before they can say they really understandthe meaningof the concept.The DevelopmentCourse thus requriedevery student to partici- pate in a collectiveresearch project that appliedthe method of analysisintroduced in coursework. For Ruth First the Marxist method of analysis,precisely becauseit is scientific,had to be aggressive,critical: Teaching it shouldwake up the students,oblige them to think. Shespoke at the conferenceon SocialSciences in SouthernAfrica, heldin Maputo in July 1982,of how this perspectivewas integrated into the Development Course, and of the difficulties we encountered:

'fhe studentsget the text aheadof the lecture-at the end they have what you might call a book; it's a setof notes.It is not a textbook, becausewe're trying to saythere is neverone text, you haveto confront theory in sucha way that you must learnhow to reada text, you must learn how to do textual analysis,but that doesn'tmean that onetext is goingto giveyou all the answers.We're very interested in provoking.If studentsdon't ask questionsthen we are failing. . . . Another problem we have is how do you have genuine student participationin research?How do you organizeresearch in sucha way that you do not use studentsas cheap labour? In other words, we preparethe questionnairesand we preparethe conceptualizationof the course,and thenwe havethese 26 people,and they'reall readyand they pack their suitcasesand theygo into the country,and they'vejust got to fill in so many questionnairesevery day. Well, of course,it's a great temptation to do the thinking for somebodywho hasn'tdone it before,because you can think and work faster,and we are better at now more total involvementof studentsin the actualconceptualiza- tion of the projectthan wewere in the beginning.But we'restrugglingl

For this reasonRuth resistedfalling into setpatterns with the DevelopmentCourse and pushedstaff to think aboutnew waysto organizethe teachingand researchto overcomethese problems.The coursewas reduced from two yearsto one,for example,and classeswere structured more cÌoselyaround the problematicof the researchproject.

l. Ì heCEA thanksMichael Wolfers and RadioMozambique for thetranscription of Ruth First'scomments at the Conferenceon SocialSciençes in ScruthernAfrica. in Maputo,July 1982. Ruth First and the DevelopmentCourse r65

Behind all of this experimentationwas Ruth's conviction that scientificintellectual work isindispensable in a revolution- ary struggle,although the professionalintellectual is perhaps lessso. She herselfreveled in intellectuallife, adoreda sharp critical discussionof a novel or film,,enjoyed talking about ideas,but was increasinglyimpatient with and bored by the existentialself-torture of many intellectuals.The Development Course recruited studentsof extremelyvaried educational backgrounds;some had attendedonly primaryschool but had a good dealof work experience.The courseaimed not to turn them into professionalresearchers but, rather,to train revolution- ary cadres,seeing social investigationas a necessarypart of theirwork. 2.In a revolutionarycontext, the Universityhad to take on new forms of training that took advantageof the experienceof cadresand respondedto the requirementsof everydaypractice. Ruth First consideredgood training in theory to be an indispensableelement of political practice,precisely because analysisis the basisfor formulating and applyingpolitical line. But she also thought that revolutionary practiceitself could givecadres the capacityto makegreat leaps in their theoretical development,using their own work experienceas the basisfor their analytical training. She recognizedthe importance of specializedtraining but, at the same time, thought that a revolutionaryuniversity had to remainconstantly preoccupied with its openness,with serviceto the Party and to the state, with its flexibility in contributing to the training of cadres without pulling them out of their work places. Studentsfrom the DevelopmentCourse therefore included an agriculturalcredit managerfrom the bank, an agricultural planner,the directorof a workers'schoolin the port, political commissarsfrom the army,,and curriculum plannersfrom the Ministry of Education.We tried to arrangethe schedulingof classesand the distribution of texts to allow the studentsto participatein thecourse without retreatingfrom realresponsi- bilitiesin theirjobs. The centralresearch project in thecourse wasintended not only to posea realand importantproblem in socialist transition in Mozambique, but also to lead the r6ó Aquino de Brogança & Brídget O'Laughlin studentsï"o analyzein a similar way the problemsthey met in their everydaywork. The CEA also used the experienceof the Development Courseto participatein alternativeforms of training outside the University:seminars and short coursesfor cadresof the cooperativemovement, for journalists,for thebanks. Texts on Mozambiquedeveloped for the coursewere distributed and usedby otherteachers both within and outsidethe University. Theseefforts to find new waysof relevantteaching were not invariablysuccessful. Ruth First raisedsome of the questions the courseconfronted in breakingwith conventionaluniversity recruitmentat the Social ScienceConference:

The kinds of questionsI'm referringto, for instance,are the problems of how we teach studentswho have different historiesof education, come from a widely different range of structures,the university, ministries,mass organizations and so on. And I think that whereaswe should probably admit that we startedoff rather romanticallyabout this. sayingit's so important to crasheducational barriers and break thiselitist monopoly, we shalldo it with sheerwillpower, in thecourse of teachingwe havecome to acknowledgethat there are problems.I don't think we'veresolved them yet. We do record,as I think Aquino said.that someof our beststudents are not the studentswho've had the most education,that that'snot the only criterion,that involvementin rvork is very important, that political formation and political exper- ienceis extremelyimportant, because understanding the relevanceof questions,knowing that you've got to resolvea problemand you must find out how to do that.That in turn armsthe studentto learn.Now I don't say we'veresolved it. We strugglewith it.

3. The struggleto build socialismis a struggleto transform the organizationof production. Although the studentsof the DevelopmentCourse were recruitedfrom manydifferent sectors, the focus of theresearch projectwas invariable: the socialisttransformation of produc- tion. This wasbecause Ruth First thoughtthat for studentsto be ableto analyzethe concrete situations they met in theirjobs they had to think strategicaÌly.They had to know and understandwhat theywere fighting for theradical transforma- tion of the organization of production through socialist development-and what they werefighting against-a struc- Ruth First and the DevelopmentCourse t67 ture of underdevelopmentmolded by colonialcapitalism. They neededto understandthe difference between socialists holding state power and using that power to socializethe economic basisol society. When studentsof the DevelopmentCourse went to Zambe- zia Provinceto study the tea plantations,for example,they looked at family agricultureas well as at the plantations themselves.They saw how the colonialsystem of recruitment of cheap contract labor had allowed a system of mono- croppingwith sharpseasonal labor demands to be profitable. Sincethe profitabilitywas based in thebackwardness of famiÌy productionin the labor reserves,socializing production in the tea sector meant breaking the structural link with semi- proletarianization. A similar pattern of semi-proletarianizationunderlay the organrzationof the labor processupon which studentsdid researchin theharbor of Maputo.The colonialsystem handled the irregular movementsof harbor traffic by keepinglarge suppliesof cheaplabor and exploiting it intensivelyin peak periods. Contract workers were brought from Inhambane Province,separated from theirfamilies, lodged in dormitories, and setto work on a task basis.Now the problemwas how to constructan alternativeoÍganrzation of port work basedon a disciplined,permanent, conscious, and well-paid working class. The DevelopmentCourse looked at the classinterests that grewout of the structureof productionof colonialcapitalism, and that did not simply fade away with the flight of the Portuguesesettlers at Independence.In Angonia, a rich agricultural area on the Malawi border, studentssaw, for example,,that dispersedsmallholder production gives rise to a petty-bourgeoistrader class if thestate itself is not in a position to organizesmall-scale retail trade. Becausesocialist developmentin Mozambique implied sharpstructural changes in theagrarian economy, rhe Develop- mentCourse placed a greatdeiil of emphasison unrierstanding family agriculture,not in orderto preserveor rationalizeit but in order to transform it along socialistlines. In the cotton- 168 Aquino de Bragança & Bridget O'Loughlin growing areas of Nampula Province, for example, students found that the biggestbottleneck in peasantcotton production occurredat the time of weeding.Cooperatives that introduced tractor ploughingwithout handlingthe problem of weeding thus did not really represent an advance in terms of the oÍganrzationof family agriculture;they incurred higher costs without being able to realizehigher output. Ruth First alwaysinsisted that the answersto suchproblems of transformation of the family sectorwere never to be found in peasantproduction alone but, rather, in the interdependence of new forms of production that break with the old pattern of semi-proletarianization.This point she made particularly sharplyin the introduction to Black Gold, the book that grew out of the CEA's study of the Mozambican Miner:

Frelimo has repeatedlycommitted itself to the ending of migrant labour, and to the integrationwithin a transformedand autocentric economy of that part of the Mozambican working classwhich has been exploited by South African capitalism,and whoseskills have beendrained from Mozambique.But if an economicprocess as old, as deeply laid and as widespread as mine labour export is to be dismantled, all its implications must be analyzed. It cannot be combattedon an ideologicallevel alone, by an appealto the political commitment of the migrant. This would be to dismissthe systemof migrant labour as an act of will by a host of migrant workers,to miss the essenceof a deep-seatedeconomic system that has promoted the political economy of the countrysideof southernMozambique. . . . Eight decadesof the systemof migrant labor made it a structural necessityfor rural producersliving under colonialism. . . . lf the endingof labour export, and by extensionthe subordinationof the Mozambicaneconomy to South African capitalism,is a necessary prerequisitefor the creationof a materialbase for the constructionof socialism,the re-integrationof this workforcewithin an autonomous economy moving towards socialismcould take two complementary forms. The first would be the useof the workforce and the skills it has acquired in M ozambique'sindustrialisation programme, especially in the heavyindustry, transport and miningsectors. The secondwould be the re-integration within the agricultural sector of this formerly exported labour. But it could not, of course, be an unchanged agriculture. . . . The phasingof Mozambique'sagricultural policy, the relativeweight given to the development of communal villages (oldeias comunois) Ruth First and the DevelopmentCourse 169

with co-operativeproduction as their materialbase, and to the state Í'armsector, these issues and their contingentpolicy decisions continue to be formulatedwithin ttre politicalstructures of Frelimo and the government.The purposeof this study,which was undertakenwithin two years of Mozambique'sindependence, was to assistin the elaborationof a socialistalternative to a systemof labour usewhich grosslyexploited the working class,and which disfiguredagricultural productionin the southernregions of the country(1983: 3-5).

In accord with this perspective,out of the work on the miners came two further studiesby the CEA in southern Mozambique.Both lookedat therelationship between coopera- tives,state farms, and a family sectorheavily dependent on wage-income.They saw the transformationof agricultural production as a necessaryelement in the resolutionof the problemof migrant mine labor. Sincethe researchprojects of the DevelopmentCourse were orientedso strictly toward the details of production,Ruth First had to answerthe almostinevitable charges of economismand reductionism:Students were not engagingwith the ideological strugglesthat make up a necessarypart of socialistconstruc- tion. 'fhe DevelopmentCourse began, however, with theassump- tion that people'sconsciousness is necessarily the productof the materialorganiz-ation of their lives.Thus, one can never abstractideological struggle from its materialcontext, in our casethe struggleto organizenew forms of production.The study in the harbor, for example,focused a great deal of attentionon ideologicalproblems-the waysin whichdifferent groupsof workersconceptualized the problemsof theworking day in the harbor, and the ways in which theseconceptions were reflectedin their forms of struggle in the workers' councils. The focuson productionwas thus,for Ruth, a matter of determiningpriority in theorder of analysis.In a revolutionary context one cannot simply do a critique of ideology;the researchermust analyzewhat it will mean to transform the materialconditions of productionwithin which consciousness is rooted. In the caseof the harbor, for instance,creating a t70 Aquino de Bragonço & Bridget O'Inughlin common classconsciousness depends on breakingwith an organizationthat stemsfrom the colonial systemof cheap labor recruitment and pits different categoriesof workers againstone another. 4. The struggÌefor nationalÌiberation in South Africa is strategicallyof a piecewith the struggleto build socialismin Mozambique. Ruth First'swork on the DevelopmentCourse did not representfor her a deviationform her life'swork asa South African revolutionary.On the contrary,she considered the transformationof productionalong socialist lines in Mozam- biqueto bea decisivestep in thestruggle for nationalliberation in South Africa. The Mozambicanstudents she trained thus representedfor her cadressin the struggleagainst Apartheid. Her view derivedin part from the way South African racial capitalismdominates the regionaleconomy in a systemof unevendevelopment. Despite considerable divergence in politi- calorientations and strategies of development,the states of the regionhave a common materialinterest in the struggleagainst Apartheid. But the unity betweenFRELIMO and the strugglefor nationalliberation in SouthAfrica surpassed,for Ruth,that of the regionalalliance. This wasbecause she saw the struggle for national liberation in South Africa âS, at the moment, objectivelya struggleagainst capitalism per se.The construc- tion of socialismin Mozambique,by definingan alternativeto the systemof racialcapitalism in the organizationof produc- tion, isthe mostimportant form of supportthat canbe given to revolutionariesworking within SouthAfrica. Conversely, it is to be expectedthat South Africa will strike with particular force againstsociqlisí Mozambique. For thesereasons. the regionalcontext was a centralstream of the DevelopmentCourse. Students explored the character of South African racial capitalismand analyzedthe various classpositions advanced in thestruggle against it. Theylooked at the basisof the regionaÌalliance, in countrystudies and in the orsanizationof SADCC. Ruth thouehtthev needed to be Ruth First and the DevelopmentCourse t7l able to analyzethe tacticalpositions that Mozambiquemust define in a long-term strategicstruggle. This was the perspectivetoward withdrawal from South African capitalismdeveloped in the first CEA projectdirected by Ruth,"The MozambicanMiner." At thetime. (1911) some arguedthat all minersshould be immediatelyand unilaterally withdrawn from South Africa. The miners study, instead, posedthe problem in strategicterms: how to transform the systemof productionwithin Mozambiqueitself to developa long-term alternativeto migration to the mines of South Africa, eitherin industryor in a more productiveagriculture. Similar preoccupationsunderlay the CEA's researchon transportin southernAfrica, a studyundertaken in collabora- tion with the EconomicsDepartment of the University of Zimbabwe.The regionalalliance formed by SADCC aimsfor economicreorientation of the regionthrough the development of bilateralor multilateralprojects that grow out of cornmon material interests.In the caseof transport,the reroutingof Zimbabwetrade, channeled through South Africa in the UDI periodto the harborsof Mozambique,should be beneficialto both countries.Since the restructuring will depend,in part,on the increasedefficiency of the ports and railwaysin Mozam- bique,students in the DevelopmentCourse took on thispart of thejoint research.Ruth thoughtthat researchcollaboration in southernAfrica, and the sharingof information,would grow out of such joint venturesreflecting shared interest in a common and prolongedstruggle.

AnsweringSouth Africa

Ruth Firstwas not dauntedby the prospectof a prolonged struggle.She was constantly analyzing contradictions, sorting out the principalfrom thesecondary. She put energyinto areas whereit waspossible to moveahead by forcinga contradiction; sheworked to maintainalliances in areaswhere unity wasmore important than difference. t72 Aquino de Bragança & Bridget O'Laughlin

This tastefor struggle,and hel confidencein its results,Ruth First communicatedto those with whom she worked and brought into the organrzationof work in the CEA. When our ways of working beganto stagnate,when we wereno longer consistentlycoming into contradictionwith our owrìpractice, sheforced us to react,to criticize,to moveahead. She thought it normal that therewould be very rapid developmentduring this phaseof the MozambicanRevolution, and shewanted the CEA to be ableto respondby organrzrngnewways to makeits work more usefulto FRELIMO. She looked forward to the Fourth Party Congressof FRELIMO, expectingthat we would entera new and probablyclearer phase of struggle.She wantedtime to reflecton the rolethat teachingand research in the CEA shouldassume in this new period. The murderof Ruth Firstby the SouthAfrican regime was a blow againstMozambique and againstthe liberationmove- ment in South Africa, which we still feel in almost every moment. But Ruth left us a mandateto rethink and criticize our work: the organrzationof the CE,A,the principallines of research,our forms of teaching.Without her the CE,Acannot bewhat it was.but shehad alreadytold usthat we mustchange and move ahead.And sheleft us with a securematerial base from which to begin:an innovativeorganization of collective work basedon unity of political line; methodsof teaching accessibleto worker-students;methods of research-training basedon doing researchon immediateand important ques- tionsof socialisttransition; written materialson Moz-ambique and southern Africa that were both the product of past development courses and the teaching material for new courses;and Mozambicancadres trained by Ruth to analyze and act strategicallyin the strugglefor socialistliberation in southernAfrica.

Reference

First. Ruth (l9tÌ3). Black Gold. Sussex:Harvester.