Arts/Review

‘World Apart’ heroine recalls:

117 DAYS. By Ruth First. Bloomsbury Pub-
lishers, London. 1988 (first printed in 1965).
144 pages. Paper, $7.95. At the People’s
Co-op Bookstore.

Ruth First was at the University of Johan-
nesburg in September, 1963, training for a
_ jobasa librarian, when she was arrested and
taken to Marshalt Square jail. First was
studying librarianship because the latest set
of bans by the South African government
prohibited her from pursuing her career as a
journalist.

Born in 1925, Ruth First came from an
activist family and by 1946 she was a mem-
ber of the South African Communist Party
and a founding member of the Congress of
Democrats, the organization that provided a
political home for white supporters of the
African National Congress. In 1956 she was

tried for treason along with 155 other Con-
gress of Democrats leaders and was acquitted.

First’s arrest in 1963 was the result of the
newly enacted 90-Day Law that allowed her
to be jailed without charge for 90 days. She
was arrested in connection with the raid on
Rivonia, the house in suburban Johannes-
burg which was the underground headquar-
ters of the ANC.

; Ih 117 Days she describes her first night
in jail: “Calm but sleepless, I lay for hours
on the bed, moving my spine and legs ’round
the bumps on the mattress, and trying toplan
for my first interrogation session. WouldI be
able to tell from the questions whether they
knew I had been at Rivonia? Had I been
taken in on general suspicion of having been
too long in the Congress movement, on free-
dom newspapers, mixing with (Nelson)

Vancouver Island festivals on

Knowledge Network presents Yehudi
Menuhin in the USSR, conceming the
famed violinist’s performance with Soviet
musicians in his homeland which he visited
on the personal invitation of Mikhail Gor-
bachev, on Sunday, July 1, 9 p.m. B.C.’s
public channel also airs, on the Cross Cur-
rents series, Destructive Engagement,
conceming children “caught in the
crossfire” of the civil wars in Angola and
Mozambique, on Monday, July 2, 10
p.m.

2k

ratulations

Ukrainian Hall in
Richmond. | |
Pauline Bartko
Ann Withers

Plays on historical highlights of Van-
couver Island are the fare at The Nanaimo
Festival, which has been Tunning since May.
Currently on stage, through July, are The
Dunsmuirs, Part I, and Alma Victoria.
Slated to start July 10 is Black Apples,
concerning the miner’s strike of 1877. Tick-
ets for the festival, at a variety of prices, can
be ordered from the Islands Festivals Hot-
line, (604) 754-7587. Also available through
the hotline are tickets for the Courtenay
Summer Music Festival, beginning July 8,
and the Hornby Festival on Homby Island,
Aug. 8-18.

fit MCMOTY
of
Dorothy

Vin

sam Vint

Mandela and (Walter) Sisulu, Kathradam
and Govan Mbeki, who had been arrested at
Rivonia, not to know anything? ... Had I
been tailed to an illegal meeting?

“Had the police stumbled on documents
typed on my typewriter in a place where
other revealing material had been found?

What follows is First’s account of a 90-
day detention followed by her immediate
arrest. Throughout her 117 days in jail she
was well aware of white privilege even in
prison, and in the book’s afterward historian
Tom Lodge points out that by today’s stand-
ards, First’s treatment might appear mild.

This in no way diminishes the value of
the book, for the author’s unflinching hones-
ty and complete commitment to the cause of
black liberation make 117 Days a fine ex-
ample of prison literature.

Many readers are familiar with Ruth
First’s life from her daughter Shawn Slovo’s
highly acclaimed 1988 film, A World Apart.
117 Days includes a foreword by Albie

' Sachs who, like Ruth First, was a victim of

a bomb attack. Unlike First, who was killed

in Mozambique in 1982 by a letter bomb,

Sachs survived and offers a fitting tribute to
her life.

—Rhoda Norman

People’s Daily World

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Pacific Tribune, June 25, 1990 «7