South West Africa

South West Africa

"Ruth First's journey to South West Africa to gather material for this book will be the last she will make out of Johannesburg as long as the Nationalist Government is in power: four days after she returned she was served with an order prohibiting her from leaving her home city, and she and her husband have since been placed under house arrest for five years. Ruth First holds a Social Science degree taken at Witwatersrand University, but she has been a working journalist since 1947, as the Johannesburg editor of three papers banned by the Nationalists - the Guardian, the Clarion, and New Age. She has specialized in exposures of the mutilating effects of apartheid on African life and labour. She was one of the 156 people accused in the 1956 Treason Trial, and is one of the members of the White opposition under constant fire from the South African government. The latest order prohibits anything she writes from being published in South Africa. Ruth First is married to Joe Slovo, one of the three barristers whom the government will seek to disbar for political reasons under a law to be placed before the South African Parliament during the 1963 session. They have three daughters"

Ruth First

Penguin

1963

© Ruth First 1963

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