wage should not take into account the miner’s dependants because they live on subsistence farming, and that in any case a high wage would be a disincentive as mine workers would take a long time in the reserves before offering themselves for labour on the mines again. In other words, a high wage would affect the supply of mine labour unfavourably.
The shootings in Joburg in 1950 received full coverage in the Guardian. By 1952 when the Defiance Campaign got under way, press photography had already established its role. Photographs of group after group of volunteers were a tremendous visual aid that made even illiterate people buy the paper because they could read the message of the struggle from the grim faces of the volunteers and what was then the Congress salute.
In the campaign to publicise the Congress of the People, the GLONS was alone in the field explaining tirelessly what the people should do to express their views and what a future South Africa should look like. In a way it was a referendum, the result of which is the Freedom Charter.
Then came the period of the great exposures which infuriated the government. Here was a photograph of Charles R. Swart (Mnyamana), the then Minister of Justice, towering above a group of giggling Nationalist parliamentarians as he fondled a cat-o’-nine-tails after he had piloted through parliament a Bill which prescribed flogging for offences associated with those living in conditions of poverty – in other words, the oppressed.
Under Hendrik Verwoerd, then Minister of Native Affairs, the implementation of pass laws was intensified. A special police section – the Ghost Squad – was set up. Its function was to keep a tight check on passes and to arrest pass law offenders. Almost from nowhere the Ghost Squad sprang on Africans on busy streets, at odd places and times. Droves of African males were caught in this dragnet. The Native Commissioner’s Courts, especially in Joburg, could not cope with the flood of arrests. One of the concomitant results of this drive was that a large number of such pass offenders were pressed into labour on the farms without going through the legal court procedures – such as there are. The GLONS hunted for the Ghost Squad, as they in turn, unaware they were being tracked down, hunted for and swiftly bundled their victims into closed vans. In the meanwhile people on the crowded pavements went about their business without so much as throwing a second glance at an African man who was stopped and led to the edge of the pavement, ostensibly by friends. To white South Africans all seemed normal.
The GLONS caught the Ghost Squad in action and splashed their photographs. Thus exposed, the Ghost Squad was stripped of its ghost mask. From week to week the story, accompanied by photographs, told of the disappearance without trace of men who had left the township in the mornings to go to work. The people were awakened to the brutal reality of the new type of pass: the Dom Pass. To check the Dom Pass, police had to thumb through its many pages and one was lucky not to be caught out in one or another of the various sections.
Quietly the editorial staff of GLONS was trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of law-abiding men who failed to return home after work. A number were traced to the potato farms of the eastern Transvaal in the Bethal area. Photographs of some of the lost men dressed in grain sacks were splashed. One story told of how the men were whisked away, how they lived on the potato farms, how those who died at the hands of the foremen were buried in furrows and covered under the soil as the tractor ploughed through into the furrow where the corpse lay. The unfolding of the ghastly truth was so shocking that the government did not make any attempts to deny it. Instead they explained it away by saying: those are Jewish-owned farms.
The anger of the people found immediate expression in the as yet most successful nationwide economics boycott: the potato boycott.
During periods when there was considerable unemployment in the townships, the government employed convict labour especially on the railways (at the loco). It also hired out convict labour at a fee which was far less than the average wage of unskilled labour – itself far below subsistence level. When the GLONS reported on this practice, cabinet ministers dismissed it as Communist propaganda. The GLONS took photographs of convict labour working at premises of private concerns, such as wool-packing houses. Challenged by captions such as “The Camera Does Not Tell Lies”, the government fell back on its last line of defence. It passed legislation making it a criminal offence to take and publish photos of prisoners or prisons without the permission of the minister.
In covering the march of 20 000 women to the Union Buildings to protest against the extension of pass laws to women, the GLONS captured this historic event by filming it so that it could be shown on the screen.
It is to be hoped that at some time the role that the GLONS played in advancing the cause of the struggle for liberation in this country will be shown more fully, and that a collection of some of Comrade Ruth’s main articles will be compiled.
EDITOR OF FIGHTING TALK
As editor of Fighting Talk, Comrade Ruth’s ability as an organiser blossomed. In addition to the exacting work in GLONS, she called on her inner springs of energy to marshal a wide range of writers for the monthly Fighting Talk. It required one with the push she had to have ensured the regular publication of the high standard of F. T. She drew contributors from both within the Movement and from outside its ranks. One would have imagined that her fork already carried more than it could. No! In addition to finding diverse contributors who required some prodding to observe the deadlines and the general editing work involved, she had to keep an eye on the financial side and distribution of the magazine.
A POLITICAL ACTIVIST
The role which Comrade Ruth played in building and guiding the CP, especially after it was forced to operate illegally, can only be mentioned in passing here. She had one of the sharpest brains and played a vital role in solving some of the most knotty problems. At the highest decision-making levels she participated in shaping policies that will vitally influence the future course of events in this country. The CP does not operate in a vacuum. It works amongst the masses of the oppressed and exploited, and to that end she applied herself as devotedly in advancing the cause of national liberation as in advancing that of the working class. As the expression goes, yimazi ephala neenkabi (a mare that holds her own in the race with steeds).
Always nurturing, she worked hard to set up an illegal printing press for the Movement, and when an illegal radio was commissioned, she played an important part in the preparation of the script for broadcast. She lined up material for an illegal publication which was intended for translation into the main African languages: Why You Should Be A Communist. Under trying conditions she kept a steady nerve. When the post-Rivonia “Mfecane/Difaqane” gathered momentum and she had herself spent about four months in detention, she left the country to continue the struggle from outside the borders. This gave her an opportunity to develop yet another dimension in her varied contribution to the struggle. She engaged in research work, on the basis of which she wrote books on problems affecting the African continent.
AT HOME
Those who knew her as the tough politician she was or as the journalist who used her pen so effectively to destroy the myth of the race superiority of the whites, might have found it difficult to think of her as a woman who had a home to run and a mother who had children to rear. She invited friends to her home and as a host she was always warm. Her idea of what a new South Africa should look like was reflected in the relaxed atmosphere one experienced in her home.
WEEP NO MORE
Comrade Ruth is no more, but to those who would shed tears we say: Weep no more. She lived a full and fruitful life. Her life holds lessons for us, the living: to hold back nothing of ourselves to ensure ultimate victory for the cause of the struggle against fascism. Comrade Ruth dedicated her life to this noble cause, and in thinking of her, let our resolve to bring about the liberation of the masses of the oppressed and exploited peoples of this land – whatever the price – be strengthened. She has shown us: “We must be free or die.”
Forward to Freedom.
Amandla! Matla!
[Ruth First died on 17 August 1982]
Reply to P.W. Botha’s offer
to release on condition we
renounce violence