Selected Writings

Ruth First, born in 1925, held multiple roles during the struggles of her time as a communist militant, journalist, researcher and leading intellectual in South Africa.

Until her assassination in 1982, she was a committed anti-apartheid activist and was one of the many defendants of the Treason Trial and imprisoned without charge in solitary confinement for 117 days in 1963.

Ruth First on a range of topics including the landmark 1956 Women’s March, the workings of the apartheid state, and the history of anti-apartheid armed struggle against this state, introduced by an essay on First’s life and legacy, written by Vashna Jagarnath, a labour activist who works in the office of the general secretary of the National Union of Metal workers of South Africa (NUMSA).