Books

The struggle to free South Africa from its apartheid shackles was long and complex. One of the many ways in which the apartheid regime maintained its stranglehold in South Africa was through controlling the freedom of speech and the flow of information, in an effort to silence the voices of those who opposed it. United by the ideals of freedom and equality, but also nuanced by a wide variety of persuasions, the voices of liberation were many: African nationalists, communists, trade-unionists, pan-Africanists, English liberals, human rights activists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to name but a few.

This biography commemorates Ruth First, journalist, political activist and member of the Communist Party. The story of her life and untimely death is told primarily through her writings, which were banned in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Lauretta Ngcobo’s death in November 2015 robbed South Africa and the African continent of a significant literary talent, freedom fighter, and feminist voice. Born in 1931 in Ixopo in the then Natal Province, South Africa Ngcobo was one of three pioneering black South African women writers – the first to publish novels in English from the particular vantage point of black women.