Ruth First At 101 Years: From the Freedom Charter to Armed Struggle
(Heloise Ruth First would have turned 101 years today, as she was born on 4 May 1925 in Johannesburg. In recognition of her birthday, we are posting one of Ruth First’s seminal writings, titled “From the Freedom Charter to Armed Struggle”, which was penned in 1968 in in her Selected Works published in September 2022).
The launching of armed struggle against the South African regime must be seen against the total background: the history of South Africa is one of organised violence applied against the majority of the people. First, the violence of military conquest over three centuries (the last act of armed resistance was the Bambatha Rebellion at the beginning of this century in Natal), and then the institutionalised violence of a political system which entrenches a minority in power against the will and the interests of a majority that outnumbers them four to one.
The history of South Africa is also one not of a steady or even gradual devolution towards greater fights for the majority, but of a progressive loss of rights, the abolition of what limited franchise existed as a hangover from Cape liberalism of the nineteenth century, and a consistent undermining and finally abolition of the right of the individual to advance his civil liberties and living standards through the courts and the use of the rule of law, or by political or trade union organisation.
Non-violent protest was a tenet of
