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The Ideas, Writings, and Actions of Ruth First and Joe Slovo Alan

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The Ideas, Writings, and Actions of Ruth First and Joe Slovo Alan Speaking to the Present in South Africa: The Ideas, Writings, and Actions of Ruth First and Joe Slovo Alan Wieder History and memory and how the past speaks to the present is a topic that should continually be revisited – ongoing conversations and analysis, of course, facilitate better understanding across time spans. Yet, it is a difficult task as each era is different and “history repeating itself” is at best an historical trope. Even if historians have no concern with the present time, what they write provides lessons on how we live our lives. I think, however, that you must be very careful when connecting the past and the present. Too often when we attempt the connection, we glorify the past and demonize today. In an article connected to the 50-year anniversary commemoration of the Rivonia Raid and Trial, Nicholas Wolpe spoke to the best possibilities and uses of this particular history. He wrote of the importance of preserving the “history, memory and legacy” of the struggle and the imperative of South Africa embracing “the ideals, beliefs and principles upon which our liberation struggle was predicated. He concluded: “Equally it is important that we continue to celebrate and draw lessons from the lives of those who shaped our country’s history and contributed to the freedom and democracy we enjoy today.” Not only are Ruth First and Joe Slovo people “who shaped South African history and contributed to the freedom and democracy in the country today.” They are integrally connected to the house where we meet today – and thus both the Rivonia Raid and the Rivonia Trial. Joe helped plan the beginnings of MK right here and if he wouldn’t have gone out of the country with J. B. Marks to gain support for the underground struggle he would have surely been a defendant in the trial. Ruth visited Rivonia everyday and it was only happenstance that she wasn’t here when the Raid took place. As everyone knows, she was subsequently imprisoned for 117 Days and clearly believed that she was going to be part of The Trial. In the case of Ruth First and Joe Slovo, politicians and academics, some of them struggle activists, have opined on how Ruth and/or Joe might have spoke to the actions of government and the growing disparity that exists almost two decades after the first South African democratic election in 1994. A partial list of this group includes Zwelinzima Vavi, Jacqueline Cock, Jeremy Cronin, and Jay Naidoo. And each of these people provide questions and insights on how both Ruth and Joe might have led differently than today’s leaders. Issues included class disparity, unemployment, sexism, outrageous CEO salaries, disparate housing, education and healthcare, government and corporate corruption and hypocrisy, and censorship that were antithetical to Ruth and Joe’s “values and moral principles” for “equality and justice.” The focus of this lecture is different. Rather than trying to predict what either Ruth or Joe would say or do at the present time, I would like to review some of their ideas, writings, and actions as historical lessons for today. I refer to Jeremy Cronin’s memories of Joe. What would cde JS make of our current ANC, SACP and Alliance? What would he have to say about our present government, or the prevailing South African and international reality? There is always the temptation to claim cde JS’s authority 1 for whatever views we might personally now hold – but, let’s concede it, none of us can say with any certainty what he would have to say about our present. Ruth First could be thoughtful, contentious, generous, academic, intellectual, revolutionary, and more. Joe Slovo was tough, humorous, soft, harsh, congenial, thoughtful, political, musical, and revolutionary. Ruth was sometimes compared to Rosa Luxemburg. Her commitment to the struggle against apartheid is given as testimony throughout the interviews that I had with the people who knew her. Albie Sachs once described her as a product of Lenin and the London School of Economics. Headlines from a newspaper interview with Ruth during her London years read, “I am a Revolutionary.” Finally, her friend at the London School of Economics and beyond, American Danny Schechter told me, “She was not playing the revolution, she was making the revolution, or trying to.” Everyone that I interviewed spoke of Joe Slovo as a revolutionary. And one after another of the young cadres who worked with Joe underground spoke of his total commitment to a democratic South Africa. This lecture, like my book, provides examples of their democratic, “peoples’ power” ideas, writings, and actions in the struggle against apartheid. Ruth First and Joe Slovo were both leaders among leaders. They had different styles. They had different roles in the struggle. While it is impossible to holistically describe the ways that Ruth and Joe speak to the present, it is possible to reflect on their lives through selected examples. As a journalist and then an academic, Ruth First exemplified Edward Said’s dictum of “speaking back to power.” And she did so with a ubiquitous resolve toward people power and democracy. As she told John Heilpern in the mid-1960s: I became a communist because it was the only organization known to me in South Africa that advocated meaningful changes. And because it wasn’t just a policy, but something positive. They wanted to do something. They were immersed in the struggle for equality. They were committed. It is important to note, considering the present moment, that although Ruth’s writing and lectures were generally focused on the oppressors, she did not hesitate to also occasionally take on the SACP or even the ANC. She spoke loudly when the SACP, including Joe, supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Pallo Jordan commented on the issue in the context of Ruth’s depth, breadth, and political commitment and referred to her as a dissident communist. One example of her critiquing the ANC came when they banned the conservative newspaper Bantu World from covering an ANC conference. Ruth used the pages of New Age to remind ANC leaders of her own paper’s constant harassment and bannings from the apartheid regime. This, of course, is the type of voice needed today. 2 But most of Ruth First’s “speaking back to power” was directed at the apartheid regime. From the late 1940s till the time she left South Africa in 1964 her journalism exposed government horrors throughout the country. Ruth wrote her most famous story in 1951 on the enslavement of Bethal farm workers. She also exposed government seizure of black people’s land and other land rights issues, township conditions, and political protests like the train boycotts, bannings, and a series on how pass laws affected the lives of black South Africans. One of the land rights articles was titled “Africans Turned Off the Land.” Ruth reviewed a number of cases from different regions of the country and used the voices of people whose land was taken by the apartheid government. Ruth First provided the same kind of reporting on the townships of Johannesburg. With the activist Anglican pastor, Michael Scott, Ruth exposed the slave-like conditions in Bethal. Ruth would expand on the story in several articles and less than ten years later would report when slave-like conditions were rediscovered at the area’s farms. She witnessed police supplying forced labor to local farmers and revealed the unsanitary dwellings where workers were forced to stay with little food or water. They were paid 12 pounds for six months of labor. Ruth wrote about the conditions in The Guardian. It is not every day that the Johannesburg reporter for the Guardian meets an African farm worker who, when asked to describe conditions on the farm on which he works, silently takes off his shirt to show large weals and scars on his back, shoulders, and arms. Ruth published a series of Guardian articles under the headlines, “There Are More Bethals.” Prime Minister Smuts ordered an investigation that was at best a whitewash, something Ruth predicted in The Guardian. She reported on government-farmer collusion and photographed police incarcerating black people fleeing Rhodesia and transporting them to farms in Bethal. Joe went undercover and also helped in the investigations after accompanying Ruth to observe black people being taken from the courts to the farms. Concluding this writing was a February 1950 article titled “The Worst Place God Has Made - A State of Terror in Bethal.” Again, we might ask, in the wake of Marikana, do we need more of this type of journalism today? Obviously, there are further examples of Ruth’s journalism that we might cite and connect to events like Marakana, its coverage, as well as the recent government restrictions on free speech and more. A second element of both Ruth and Joe’s lives as revolutionaries is their personal/political interactions and connections with comrades, friends, and colleagues. Again and again the people that I interviewed told me that Joe was able to have substantive and authentic conversations with everyone. Pallo Jordan recalled that “You could talk and disagree and we had differences. Joe was far less rigid about issues than his peers. Some say it was because he was married to Ruth. To some of his comrades a difference was a brawl.” Colleague at the bar, Jules Browde, viewed Joe as the leader who was also everyman. “Joe was first of all a fine human being. He liked people from all walks of life and all shapes and sizes - all colors, made no difference to him.” Browde and George Bizos both recollect Joe’s friendship with Gert Coetzee, an Afrikaner Nationalist, who became a leading South African judge and wrote a book titled, A Rational Approach to South 3 Africa Becoming a Republic, in the early sixties.
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