#ruth first

[davidhudson]

Nelson Mandela, July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013.

With Ruth First. Photo by Jurgen Schadeberg.

[gregor-samsung]

AWA

[flesh-is-the-fever]

I cannot stand Israeli propaganda. I almost can't believe my eyes when I see it. It's such a mockery of feminism, such a mockery of Jewish history. Rosa who? Ruth who? Check out these HOT BABES with GUNS uwu. Please go die lol

Anyway here they are, two women that died fighting for something far greater than their share of imperial spoils:

[digitaldion]

This is a deeply challenging lecture by Achille Mbembe. Thank you for sharing it. I was recently at a conference where a group of African colleagues addressed South Africans. The gist of their reprimand was that we have become a racist, Afro-phobic, Afro-pessimistic, violent, nationalist, unkind and forgetful people.

I am ashamed... I am ashamed because I fear that it may be true!

Here are a few quotes from the attached article. It is well worth the 5 minutes it will take to read. Read, reflect, repent, and then let us:

Witness to the truth

Live the alternative

Bind up the broken

Replace evil with good

—-

‘To the age of white racism has therefore succeeded the age of black on black racism. As Frantz Fanon foresaw not so long ago, South African forms of black nationalism are morphing into virulent forms of black-on-black racism. An ethno-racial project, this new form of black nationalism seeks to secede from Africa and its diasporas. It has forged for itself two enemies, an enemy it fears and envies (whiteness or white monopoly capital) and another it loathes and despises (Blacks from elsewhere). In a miraculous turn of events, it believes that xenophobia will create jobs, bring down crime and turn South Africa into an Eden on Earth. It has internalised white racism and has weaponised it against black non-citizens through the vicious use of State apparatuses.’

‘...former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo recalls Nigeria’s contribution “to the struggle against colonialism in southern Africa and apartheid in South Africa”. It was, he says, “our obligatory duty to do so as Africans”. “We, as black people, believed and still believe that we would be second-class citizens in the world if we allowed any black people anywhere in the world, not to talk of Africa, to be treated as second-class citizens because of the colour of their skin”...’

‘South Africa will squander everything if, instead of consciously and dutifully fulfilling its obligation to humanity, it chooses to put its faith in the sheer and always precarious politics of power. For power to mean anything at all and for it to endure, it has to rest on firm moral foundations.’

Here is the article: https://www.newframe.com/ruth-first-memorial-lecture-2019-achille-mbembe/

[danielaandsurroundings-blog]

accadde...oggi: nel 1925 nasce Ruth First

accadde…oggi: nel 1925 nasce Ruth First

Ruth First (Johannesburg, 4 maggio 1925[1] – Maputo, 17 agosto 1982[1]) è stata un’attivista e sociologa sudafricana.

Fu uccisa da un pacco bomba a lei indirizzato mentre era in esilio in Mozambico.

I genitori di Ruth First, Julius First e Matilda Levetan, immigrati nel 1906 dalla Lettonia di origine ebraica in Sudafrica diventarono membri fondatori del Partito Comunista Sudafricano (South…

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[celebratingamazingwomen]

Ruth First (1925-1982) was a South African political activist who fought against apartheid in her country, and was eventually killed for her convictions. While at university, she founded the Progressive Students League, and met other important figures such as Nelson Mandela. She was editor for radical newspapers that were eventually outlawed in the country.

In 1963 she was arrested for her political protests, the first white woman to be imprisoned under the Ninety-Day Detention Law. She was exiled to London a year later, and became an academic at universities in the UK and Mozambique. It was there that she was killed via a letter bomb ordered by the South African Police.

[dailyplanetza-blog]

Iconic South African women: Ruth First

A mural of Ruth First in Soweto. (Image source: Derek Smith/ Flickr/ Wikipedia)

As part of Women’s Month, we at the Daily Planet are profiling legendary South African women, ranging from artists to activists. Today we zoom in on Ruth First. 

Why she’s an icon: First spent years as an investigative journalist who exposed injustices and was an anti-apartheid activist (which resulted in her assassination).

Fast facts: 

She was born in 1925 in Johannesburg. She was assassinated in Mozambique in 1982. 

Her parents, immigrants from Latvia and Lithuania, were founding members of the South African Communist Party (SACP). 

She was the Johannesburg editor of a left-wing paper, The Guardian, in the 1950s.

First researched and edited books by Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Oginda Odinga. 

She attempted suicide while imprisoned in 1963. She had spent 90 days in solitary confinement before being released and immediately rearrested, imprisoned for 27 more days. 

First was killed by a letterbomb. Her killers were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

Quote this: "This is the psychological torture of detention. Men and women who fight for political causes in a country like South Africa, must, I think, expect to be arrested and must expect to be detained, although I would fight for their right to release and for a fair trial. But it is a special form of torture to arrest somebody and say, 'We cannot even tell you when you will be released', and the only thing which can release you is co-operation with your interrogators, with your inquisitors."

Sources: SA History; ru.ac.za; anc.org.za.

[forthegoodofthehood]

Alan Wieder joins us now to discuss his new book, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid Wieder is an oral historian who lives in Portland, Oregon. He is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and has also taught at the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. In the last ten years he has published two books and numerous articles on South Africans who fought against the apartheid regime.