This article includes material from a work-in-progress, Barbara Harlow’s major book on South African writer and political activist, Ruth First, assassinated in 1982. Ruth First’s own life followed many paths, intersecting along the way with several historical trajectories, national narratives that remain incomplete today, and political events and eventualities that are still being negotiated, contested and resisted. The author follows these paths in an attempt to locate a framework and a direction for writing what she calls a bio-bibliography, an intellectual biography that is at once a political history.
The editors have edited Harlow’s materials and added footnotes and various citations. Parts of this article were previously published in Barbara Harlow, ‘Looked class, talked red: sketches of Ruth First and redlined Africa’, Meridians3, no. 1 (2002), pp. 226–51.
2.
For a discussion of Harlow’s choice to focus her study of Ruth First on the later years, see Neville Hoad, ‘Introduction to Barbara Harlow, Looked Class, Talked Red: towards a bio-bibliography of Ruth First’ in this issue of Race & Class60, no. 3 (2019).
3.
The Ruth First Papers consists of a collection of Ruth First’s personal papers, including notes, writings, correspondence, photographs and other materials. The Ruth First Papers project is a partnership between the Ruth First Memorial Trust at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, the UWC-Robben Island Mayibuye Archives and Centro de Estudios Africanos, Universidade Eduardo Mondiane that began after her death in 1982. Information about the mission of the Trust and some of the material is available online at http://www.ruthfirstpapers.org.uk/. The entire collection of seventy-seven boxes is now housed and available for view in the Special Collections Division, Senate House Library (SHL), University of London, Commonwealth Studies Archive, (http://archives.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/Details/archive/110023744). Where Harlow discusses items from the Ruth First Papers, the editors (Gordon and Hoad) have added references to the specific location of these items in the ‘Ruth First Papers’ catalogue (http://archives.libraries.london.ac.uk/resources//ICS117.pdf). All photographs of documents from the collection were taken by Avery F. Gordon.
4.
SHL, Ruth First Papers, 117/1/3/9/8: Principal Correspondents [Friends and acquaintances] 1975. Letter from Nelson Mandela to Ruth First, 20 October 1975.
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Harlow’s original manuscript has notes here indicating an intention to discuss: a) the Ruth First Papers collection at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies in London, of which she was a board member; b) the deteriorating state of South Africa’s archive system and the risks to preservation; c) the attention the personal papers of First or Mandela deserve and to what ends; d) the phenomenon of proliferating autobiographies and hagio-historiographies from partisans in South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggles and the desire that Looked Class, Talked Red reposition First’s bio-bibliography in alternative national and international narratives.
6.
RuthFirstScottAnn, Olive Schreiner: a biography (London: Andre Deutsch, 1980), p. 244.
7.
SHL, Ruth First Papers, 117/1/2/18: Daily programme [c.1970–1975].
8.
SHL, Ruth First Papers, 117/1/3/1/2: Principal Correspondents: Joe Slovo 1963–64. Letters from Ruth First to Joe Slovo on 7 December 1963; 21 December 1963; and 4 January 1964.
9.
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1956–98: B.2.2 National Committee Minutes, 1960–94, MSS AAM 43.
10.
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1956–98: B.1.2 AGM and EGM papers, 1963–95: AGM papers, 1971–4 MSS AAM 15.
11.
Ronald Segal, Political Africa: Who’s Who of personalities and parties (London: Stevens, 1961), p. 92.
12.
Personal conversation between Barbara Harlow and Stuart Hall.
13.
Hilda Bernstein, The Rift: the exile experience of South Africans (London: Jonathan Cape, 1994), p. 447.
14.
Bernstein, The Rift, p. 452.
15.
Bernstein, The Rift, p. 457.
16.
SHL, Ruth First Papers, 117/1/3/3: Principal Correspondents: Gillian Slovo 1965–1982. Letter from Ruth First to Gillian Slovo on 8 June 1977.
17.
SHL, Ruth First Papers, 117/1/8/2/1 [1970]: Notes for Power over Africa and Profile of a Corporation. Power over Africa: Synopsis and other notes. SHL, Ruth First Papers, 117/1/8/3/2: Notes for Messiah, Mob and Guerrilla. Draft sections of The African Predicament: a reader. It is an irony worth noting that the Chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa Ltd, H. Oppenheimer, was a member of the Council of this Institute of Race Relations.
18.
AnthonySampson, Mandela: the authorized biography (New York: Vintage, 2000), p. 521.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission Amnesty Hearing Transcripts, Pretoria – 13 (2–6 November 1998), p. 513. Available online at: http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/amntrans/am1998.htm. Harlow’s original manuscript contains a note to elaborate on: the British heritage site at 11 Lyme Street, London; ANC graves in Maputo and repatriation; new questions generated by CFPs; the final dispensation of the Ruth First papers.
