there should emerge at the end a clearer understanding . . . In that way the discussion will have borne fruit” (“Discussion Document”). What is certain is that the issues under debate, and their outcome, are not less important today than when the exchanges took place on Robben Island.
Govan Mbeki’s prison writings – the lessons from Robben Island gathered in this publication – offer to historians and political scientists valuable raw material for any study of the ideas and ideology of the ANC-SACP alliance. They provide activists with a distillation of practical lessons about political organisation, learned in the most testing conditions. They include extended historical, political and economic analyses that must be read alongside Mbeki’s other writings in any assessment of the intellectual history of the South African left. And they are pages in a truly international literature – a record throughout the ages of the creativity and indomitability of people imprisoned for their beliefs. These prison essays mark a victory in the continuing contest between the pen and the sword.
ENDNOTES
1Govan Mbeki, interviewed by Colin Bundy, in Port Elizabeth, 1988. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations by Govan Mbeki in this Introduction are taken from a series of interviews conducted in 1988 and 1989.
2Fort Hare, founded in 1916 as the South African Native College, and until the 1960s the only university expressly intended for Africans. Up to 1938, Fort Hare admitted students who were completing high school in addition to those registered for undergraduate studies.
3E. and W. Roux, Rebel Pity: The Life of Eddie Roux (London, 1970), 147, 150.
4G. Mbeki, Transkei in the Making (Verulam, 1939), 13, 23.
5Mrs Epainette Mbeki, interviewed by Colin Bundy, in Idutywa, December 1988.
6Xuma Papers (microfilm, University of Cape Town library): G. Mbeki to Dr A. Xuma, 7 May 1941; Mbeki to Xuma, 11 September 1946; Mbeki to Xuma, 27 June 1947.
7Carneson and Schermbrucker were members of the SACP. New Age was a weekly newspaper printed in Cape Town. After the Guardian was banned in 1952, it was followed by the Clarion, the People’s World, Advance, New Age and Spark – each publication eventually banned. (See “In Memoriam: Ruth First”, infra.)
8H. Bernstein, The World That Was Ours (London, 1989, originally 1967, 218-220.
9M. Dingake, My Fight against Apartheid (London, 1987), 203.
10Names have been altered in this quotation.
11From “How They Came to Be”, typescript by G. Mbeki. (This was written in 1990 to give brief details about the origins and context of the prison writings: the typescript has been a major source for this section of the Introduction.)
12Ibid.
13Ibid.
14Ibid.
15Ibid.
Ruth First: In Memoriam
“We must be free or die”
The above words appear in a different and narrower context in a sonnet by William Wordsworth. We dig them out of that obscurity not to give them a new connotation but to apply them to a wider, nay, international setting in which the life of Comrade Ruth – now no more – may be seen. In the course of the last forty years her life has been bound up with the struggles of the oppressed and exploited peoples of this country. Freedom does not come without a struggle. And because she struggled to be free she paid the highest price which those who hold back the masses of the people here at home and the world over exact from those who strive to restore man’s heritage, his birthright: freedom. Bearing in mind the South African situation, Comrade Ruth over the years consistently acted from a deep conviction of the ultimate ascendancy of the interests of the many who create wealth over those of the few who filch it. Now for a few snapshots of her in action in her crowded lifetime.
THE JOURNALIST AND WRITER
Her work milieu
Comrade Ruth spent all her years as a journalist with the newspapers that were published by The Guardian Newspapers, which was succeeded by Real Printing & Publishing Co. (Pty) Ltd, both of them registered as private companies. Under their wing were published the Guardian (banned in 1952), the Clarion and the People’s World (both of which were banned in quick succession after operating for a couple of months), Advance (banned in 1953), and New Age (banned at end of 1962). Spark, the last of this famous line, operated for a few months and folded in March 1963. It closed after all the editorial staff in the four offices – Cape Town, Durban, Joburg and Port Elizabeth – were served with banning orders that stipulated they were not to write for any newspapers or enter any premises where a newspaper was printed or published. Some of the editorial staff were served with house arrest orders.
Comrade Ruth served as the Joburg editor of all six of the Guardian line of newspapers (GLONS), which were in the forefront of the struggle to expose the fascist character of the National Party government. Each in its time – week after week – brought before the public of this country, and public opinion the world over, the sufferings of the oppressed and exploited peoples of this country and the masses of legislation and decrees (proclamations) churned out by the National Party government aimed at crushing all opposition among the oppressed. The GLONS went further and rallied the people to fight back.
We may pause at this moment to point out that while the National Party government – under the pretext of ridding the country of “foreign Communist ideologies” – was attacking freedom of speech and assembly as well as the freedom of the press, the bourgeois press and politicians looked on without raising a finger. The Guardian line of newspapers warned the white opposition parties and their press that true to the Nazi tactics of taking out opponents one at a time, the Nationalist government’s vicious attack on the Communist Party (CP), the Congresses, progressive trade unionists, and the GLONS would, in due course of time, be unleashed against all opponents of its policies.
After banning the CP, the government turned its guns relentlessly not only on the GLONS but on the personnel. Comrade Ruth’s name, like those of many others, was placed on the roll of listed Communists. When the government made a midnight swoop in 1956 on 156 political activists who were charged with treason, Comrade Ruth was one of them. The proprietor of Pioneer Printing Press which printed New Age was also charged with treason as was the manager of Real Printing & Publishing Co. In this way, the paper was itself charged with committing treasonable acts.
In addition to the battles in which the GLONS was locked with the government, there was always the problem of financing the papers. From month to month and year to year there
