SABC News | Sport | TV | Radio | Education | TV Licenses | Contact Us
 

FIRST, Ruth

Age 57

Description
A leading ANC/SACP intellectual and the director of research and investigation at the Centre for African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique who was killed in her office by a letter bomb on 17 August 1982. Before going into exile, Ms First, from Johannesburg, had also been detained and kept in solitary confinement for one hundred and seventeen days in 1963. Two members of Security Branch headquarters were granted amnesty for her killing (AC/2000/082). At the time of publication, the First family was contesting the decision through the courts.

... and his wife Jeanette opened it, it killed her and their daughter, Katryn. // Williamson also admits killing leading ANC theoretician, Ruth First. Wife of Communist Party leader and later cabinet minister, Joe Slovo. First was blown up in the Mozambican capital of Maputo in August 1982. ...
Joe Slovo is a member of the ANC national executive. His wife, Ruth First was assassinated in 1982. // The problem we face in this country is that here is an obvious tension between reparation and reconciliation, between retribution and reconciliation. At a moral level the answer is absolutely ...
... other organisations. I did my job. // Craig Williamson did his job well. His victims are scattered across the subcontinent. // ‘August 1982, Ruth First blown up in Maputo’ // ‘June 1984 Jenny & Katryn Schoon. Blown up in Lubango, Angola’ // ‘Raids into Zimbabwe, Botswana and ...
Their friend, Ruth Gibizela survived, but it is here in the ruins of what was once a witdoek prison that she and others lived a night of terror. // These men asked if we could see the red sea, this here is the red sea. We looked at it, and when we looked we saw the heads of people, the necks were ...
We learned from your statement that Bram got ill and progressively ill. // We were not told how badly Bram was being treated while he was ill because we only at that stage were getting information from him and he always tried to underplay what was happening to him, but when we’d had two visits ...
... was signed by comrade Alfred Nzo. // She went to Lusaka only to be told that her son had already been buried in Luanda. // Then I asked Mama Ruth, Mama Ruth what do you mean? What am I going to tell the people at home? At least if I saw the grave, at least I would feel a little bit better ...
... amnesty hearings, especially those of Vlakplaas policemen, may give us a clearer picture of who did what, where despite the fact that the Truth Commission can’t indemnify people for crimes committed in other ...
We learnt from your statement that Bram got progressively ill. // We were not told how badly Bram was being treated while he was ill because we only at that stage were getting information from him and he always tried to underplay what was happening to him, but when we’d had two visits with him ...
... onto University of the Free State to study law. A highlight of his career was playing in a team against the All Blacks in 1929 and he was also the first Nationalist president of the student parliament. He seemed a model Afrikaner. But when did his ideas change, setting him on a path far removed ...
... people, dirty tricks like were directed at me, the letter bomb, things like that. There were letter bombs sent to a lot of other people, Ruth First for instance was killed by one. And there were assassinations, Dulcie September, the ANC representative in Paris in 1988. And an assassination ...
Former detective Leonard Knipe investigated this double murder. It led him straight to this man, Johnson Ngxobongwana who was found to be in charge of these secret township prisons where Ruth and others were held. Knipe arrested him.
... onto University of the Free State to study law. A highlight of his career was playing in a team against the All Blacks in 1929 and he was also the first nationalist president of the student parliament. He seemed a model Afrikaner. But when did his ideas change, setting him on a path far removed ...
... how the Slovo family were kept under surveillance, the reports relating to that, anything that would point towards what happened to Ruth First in the end. So that kind of material was just no longer in ...
... however that the security police blew people up with parcel bombs. Former super spy Craig Williamson admitted to the parcel bombs that killed Ruth First and Jeanette and Katryn Schoon. Former Vlakplaas commander, Eugene de Kock is now on trial for murdering ANC lawyer Bheki Mlangeni with a ...
... of activists. In tonight’s report we look at the assassinations of David Webster, Abram Tiro, Beki Mlangeni, Jeanette and Katryn Schoon, Ruth First and Dulcie September, and the bomb attack on Albie Sachs, and death in detention - the people the government told us over the years had slipped ...
... with the patterns of the past. Scores of assassinations remain unsolved. Richard Turner, Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto, David Webster, Ruth First and Dulcie September are but a ...
 
SABC Logo
Broadcasting for Total Citizen Empowerment
DMMA Logo
SABC © 2024
>