From exile to the thick of the struggle: Ruth First and the problems of national liberation, international sanctions and revolutionary agency

Abstract

Much of Ruth First's work examined the projects for radical transformation of Africa's political economy. She was aware of the failures of independence, writing in 1970 that decolonisation had been little more than ‘a bargaining process with cooperative African elites’. But she remained an enthusiastic advocate of some of these ‘projects’ on the continent. In 1977 she moved to Maputo to contribute to the socialist transformation of the country. This paper looks at First's contribution to the critical appraisal of independence in Africa and her own commitment to the transition to socialism in Mozambique. In this commitment are many of First's greatest strengths, but also some limitations and contradictions. The paper also presents a biographical account of Ruth First's astute enquiries into the development of capitalism in Southern Africa and the two-stage theory of revolution.