Book Review from the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard:

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/07/white-law-1983.html

A hard one to judge.
Ruth First was an anti-Apartheid activist. She dedicated her life to this struggle and was killed because of it, in 1982, by a parcel bomb that she received while living in exile in Mozambique. So, sadly, she didn't live to see the day that ended Apartheid.
This book is an account of 117 days she spent in jail, without charges made against her. The imprisonment was meant to make her talk, give information about other ANC activists. In this book she gives insight in her mental struggle to keep up her good spirits and to keep her mouth shut. It's a rather unemotional account, analytic almost. It's hard for me to say if that is because she was that kind of person, or because - when this book was published - the anti-Apartheid struggle was still in full swing, and she still had to keep information from her former interrogators.

The difficulty in judging this book is in separating the book and its author. The author was a heroine, however, the book is not suberb. It's an important historical account, it gives insight into the cruelties of the Apartheid system. But at the same time, it is strangely cool and distant. And in retrospect, her story doesn't stand out next to those of people like Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela. ( )