Ruth First with Walter Sisulu
(Courtesy of UWC-Robben Island Mayibuye Archives)
Joe Slovo with Mike Feldman and Barney Fehler
(Courtesy of Mike Feldman)
Joe Slovo and Yusuf Dadoo
(Courtesy of UWC-Robben Island Mayibuye Archives)
Monday, May 27, 2013
Pre-Publication Comments
“…which I find a truly remarkable work, revelatory not alone of these two people, their complexities or intellect and humanity conceived in the revolutionary struggle, but of the very nature of that aim evolving through present history. Alan Wieder shows himself as a writer equal to their life story, their inspiring bravery in action and self-analysis.”
-- Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize for
Literature. From the foreword.
The South African victory over
apartheid quickly became the stuff of legend: the power of good triumphing over
the forces of evil, the mighty Nelson Mandela offering a beacon of hope to
oppressed peoples the world around. True, true, and of course much more
complicated in reality. Alan Wieder’s great accomplishment here is to provide a
clear window into that complex reality, and in the process to rescue the
revolution from its myth-makers. Focusing on the lives of the colorful and
contradictory revolutionaries Ruth First and Joe Slovo, Wieder provides detail
and context, personality and character to one of the epic struggles of all
time. This book is a gripping social history, a love song to the revolution,
and a passionate and enlightening portrait of a partnership, a love-affair, and
two extraordinary activists who cast their fates with the dreams of people everywhere
for justice and freedom.
—Bill Ayers
& Bernardine Dohrn
Demonized by
apartheid, Joe and Ruth were revolutionary heroes for black South Africans.
They were formidable opponents in word and deed. This absorbing account does
them justice and illuminates the complexity and richness of their often stormy
relationship and extraordinary times.
—Ronnie
Kasrils, anti-apartheid leader and solidarity activist; former Minister of
Intelligence in South Africa; author, The
Unlikely Secret Agent
Wieder’s book
enlarges and enriches our understanding of the lives of First and Slovo, their
intense and turbulent relationship, their personalities and impact on others,
and their various roles as lawyer, journalist, underground operative,
researcher, teacher, author, political and military leader, negotiator and
cabinet minister. The evocation of the Johannesburg left during the
1950s—Gillian Slovo called them her parents’ Camelot years—is vivid and
well-observed. Ruth, Joe, and their circle combined commitment and camaraderie
with conspiracy and concealment—and also with careless and complacency. The
account of tensions between the ANC and SACP, and Joe’s efforts to reconcile
African nationalism and socialism, is a nuanced and important account. The
discussion of Ruth as writer-researcher and researcher-teacher makes use of
earlier evaluations, but goes beyond them in an important assessment of her
work as an academic engagé.
—Colin Bundy,
former Principal of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford
It has been a
real privilege for me to read Alan Wieder’s book. It brought me back in touch
with two remarkable and complex people and activists. Ruth First and Joe Slovo
emerge from this book as flesh and blood human beings facing monumentally
difficult decisions. Each of them, and those dearest to them, paid a high price
for their respective life choices. Yet Ruth and Joe’s integrity and
full-throated commitment to a different kind of South Africa not only played an
important role in doing away with the obscenity that was apartheid, they also
represent a clear road not taken in post-apartheid South Africa. This book
evokes a vital period which became a focus of myth-making rather than the kind
of clear-eyed, honest history Ruth and Joe would each have ultimately have
deemed essential.
—Dan O’Meara,
author, Volkskapitalisme, and coauthor, The Struggle for South Africa
To the
Movements he led, he was known by his initials. JS. His last name had become
anthemic when the mostly black guerilla army belted out “Joe Slovo” in song as
they marched on parade or executed sabotage missions in the secret war against
apartheid. You can’t really appreciate South Africa’s transition to democracy
without knowing why Nelson Mandela relied on his sense of strategy and how his
bravery inspired a revolution committed to non-racialism. He was a communist
known for red socks and a willingness to make compromises with capitalists that
sealed the path to freedom. And just like Nelson’s relationship with Winnie
made him stronger through his long years in confinement, Joe’s often tumultuous
relationship with his wife and comrade Ruth First, a brilliant journalist and
analyst, until her assassination, helped define the discourse of the ANC’s
painful years in exile. Now Alan Wieder has plunged into their past of domestic
and political struggle to share their story with the scope, context, and detail
that it deserves. And we all will appreciate his commitment and style in
critically respecting their contributions and bringing this dynamic duo alive
as the complex, loving and caring people they were.
—Danny
Schechter, Founder and Director of “South Africa Now”, Director of six films on
Nelson Mandela
November KBOO Radio Reading on Ruth & Joe - Let Us Now Remember Past Activists
In
recent months there have been events in both South Africa and the United
Kingdom commemorating 30 years since the South African apartheid regime
assassinated Ruth First. During the long
fight against apartheid in South Africa there were several remarkable couples
who devoted their lives to the struggle -- Winnie and Nelson Mandela, Albertina
and Walter Sissulu, Hilda and Rusty Bernstein, and of course the intrepid Ruth
First and Joe Slovo. Ruth and Joe began
their activism the decade before the apartheid regime came into power. They became members of the Communist Party in
the 1940s as they fought racism, class disparity, and oppression in South
Africa. Beginning in 1947 and ending
just before she was imprisoned in 1963, Ruth was the editor of the Johannesburg
office of The Guardian, a radical,
opposition newspaper that exposed the atrocities of the South African state,
and featured the voices of black opposition leaders. Forced into exile in 1964, she continued to
speak back to power in South Africa through her activism, writing, and
teaching. In 1982, she paid the ultimate
price for her commitment to a democratic South Africa when she was assassinated
by the apartheid regime. A year earlier,
South African commandos were elated because they believed that they had killed
Joe Slovo whom they referred to as “Enemy Number One.” The commandos had mistakenly shot the wrong
person, a Portuguese engineer. There
were later attempts on Joe’s life. At
the government’s infamous interrogation and torture prison, Daisy Farm, there
was a basement cell referred to as the "Slovo Suite."
The South African government
demonized both Ruth First and Joe Slovo throughout the struggle years. With Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Govan
Mbeki imprisoned for almost three decades beginning in 1963, Joe Slovo was,
along with Oliver Tambo and Chris Hani, one of the most important leaders in
the struggle against apartheid. He was
the main strategist of the armed struggle, and later a key player in the
negotiations with the apartheid regime that led to the country’s first
democratic government in 1994.
Ruth and Joe were complex individuals:
their partnership, early years and beyond, was tested by their individuality,
irreverence, ideology, infidelity, and intensity. Ruth First could be
thoughtful, contentious, generous, academic, intellectual, revolutionary, and
more. Joe Slovo was tough, humorous,
soft, harsh, congenial, thoughtful, political, musical, and OF COURSE revolutionary. Ruth
was sometimes compared to Rosa Luxemburg.
Her commitment to the struggle against apartheid was given as testimony after
her assassination – it still is today. Retired Constitutional Court justice, Albie
Sachs, said, “I 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 American friend,
Danny Schechter, the Media Dissector, said, “She was not playing the
revolution, she was making the revolution, or trying to.”
Ruth First and Joe Slovo were both
leaders amongst leaders. They had
different styles. They had different
roles in the struggle. Most importantly,
their complex and vital places in the fight for a democratic South Africa need
to be portrayed for the people that knew them and more importantly for those
that have come after them – both in South Africa and throughout the world.
Their legacies are especially important
in South Africa today because both politicians and other leaders, some who were
their struggle comrades, are enmeshed in repression and corruption. Unfortunately, comrade Pallo Jordan’s eulogy
of Joe where he said he had no doubt that Joe’s life and work would continue to
inspire radicals, and publisher Ronald Segal’s promise after Ruth died that the revolutionary movement would find
new purpose because of her death, remain unfulfilled.
But in 2012 huge contradictions remain
corresponding to Ruth and Joe’s revolutionary legacies and the current reality
in South Africa. They taught us that capitalism
and imperialism have inflicted immense misery on humanity and that we have to
voice and act upon our passion for economic justice, our hatred of inequality
and our impatience with reformism. Ruth
and Joe’s values and actions need to be kept alive in South Africa and
throughout the world. The spirit of each
of their positions in the struggle against apartheid is sorely necessary in the
current struggles for social justice.
Recently, University of Montreal political scientist Dan O’Meara commented
on Ruth and Joe’s lifelong fight against the rich and powerful. He spoke to the essence of why their life
stories are so important to portray at the present time.
Ruth
and Joe died trying to change the world; they died not in the arid despair of
the mind, but in hope at the possibility of change, knowing that only 'we'
could wring such change from the grasping bloody hands of 'them'.
Ruth First and Joe Slovo’s
actions always confronted the vile ruthlessness of power that initiated,
fostered, sanctioned, and protected class disparity and racism. Ruth’s work as a political activist,
journalist, writer, academic, and Director of Research at the Center of African
Studies in Mozambique, challenged commonplaces and injustices, class disparity
and racism, in South Africa and throughout the Continent. Joe, first as a radical lawyer, then as the Chief
of Staff of the struggle underground, and finally as the leader of the South
African Communist Party, combined strategy with action to fight unwaveringly
against the apartheid regime.
Both people spent their
entire lives daringly fighting for a non-racial, democratic South Africa with
the goal of socialism and equality for all people. Their values and actions help remind
generations across the board, old and young, of the possibilities when courageous
and brave individuals join together to fight oppression, or to paraphrase the
preamble to the South African Constitution:
Believe
that the World belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity!
http://kboo.fm/node/51007
Initial Post
I am creating this blog to trace the life of my forthcoming book (next month), Ruth First & Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid. The book is being published by Monthly Review Books in the United States and Jacana in South Africa. Excerpts, photographs, reviews, and book events will be included on this site.
Some links for the book -- South African links should be up later this week or next week.
Some links for the book -- South African links should be up later this week or next week.
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