Content area
Full text
Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid. By Alan Wieder. Foreword by Nadine Gordimer. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013. Pp. xvi, 390; photographs, bibliography, index. $23.95 paper.
Oral historian Alan Wieder has produced a rich personal and political biography of Ruth First and Joe Slovo, two principals of the South African anti-apartheid struggle. Told through the voices of "family, friends, comrades, colleagues, and critics," as well as First's and Slovo's own writings, the interwoven stories demonstrate both their power as a couple and the important contribution of each as an individual (p. 21). Based on information gleaned from seventy-five interviews and archival collections in South Africa and the United Kingdom, Wieder's complex narrative situates the lives of First and Slovo in the context of their history, culture, and community.
South African Jews of Latvian and Lithuanian descent, First and Slovo were part of a significant group of Eastern European Jews who escaped anti-Semitism in their homelands and embraced the anti-racist struggle in South Africa. Like First and Slovo, many joined the Communist Party of South Africa and focused on economic as well as racial injustice. After the CPS A was banned in 1950, First and Slovo continued to work underground with the reconstituted South African Communist Party and to develop a...