Ruth First was unquestionably one of the extraordinary intellectuals to have emerged from South Africa in the twentieth-century. Her political passion, intellectual vitality, and cultural engagement has been equalled by a few in country, or for that matter, on the continent. What made all this possible was her assuming the editorial position of the monthly political review, Fighting Talk, in the early 1950s. Through editorial decisions, she made the 1950s (Lewis Nkosi characterizes it as the ‘Fabulous Decade’) one of the most fascinating decades in shaping the modernist imagination of South Africans. First’s political and intellectual interventions were among the instrumental processes that made this decade so enthralling and equally traumatizing for many of our older compatriots. The Editors, in effect Ruth First, announced their arrival on the national intellectual stage with the following words: “Fighting Talk has, for many years [founded in February 1942 and folded in Februay 1963 when Ruth First was detained and imprisoned], been the organ of the Springbok Legion. It is no longer. From here on,it is ‘An Independent Monthly Review’, edited and managed by an independent committee of supporters of the Congress movement, and members of the three Congresses, the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress and the South African Congress of Democrats. . . We intend to continue Fighting Talk as a vigorous, outspoken magazine which fights the good fight for the rights of men, and which challenges the ideas and outlook of the white supremacists, because their ideas spell death to democratic institutions, to racial harmony and to peace. Fighting Talk, if we can make it so, will be the voice of the Congress Movement” (“Fighting Talk Changes Hands”, March 1954). This change of direction was at an auspicious moment, situated as it was between the Defiance Campaign of 1952 and the planned Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955, where the final draft of The Freedom Charter was actualized. Coming to self-consciousness as an instrument of historical change at this critical conjuncture, it is not surprising that it set about, and actually succeeded, in overhauling the political imagination of the progressive circles. Given that the historical importance of this political and cultural review is still unrecognized or unacknowledged in our country, nearly 40 years after its demise through political repression, it is necessary to postulate that its significance may yet be discovered to have exceeded that of its two formidable rivals of the 1950s, Drum and Liberation. Fighting Talk forged the unity between politics and culture in a singular process that this two other monthly reviews could not sustain: while Drum studiously avoided politics, Liberation condescended to cultural politics as below its high calling of Marxist and democratic politics. It is perhaps for this reason that the 1950s decade should be designated through Fighting Talk rather than by means of Drum. Having said this, this is not to undervalue the historic moment of Liberation and Drum. Few new monthlies and journals of the following four decades were to be on par with these cultural momentos of the 1950s. Ruth First made Fighting Talk so incomparable by forging on its pages intellectual intercrossings and cultural syntheses of extraordinary fertility: Marxism and modernity; Communism and Nationalism; the dialectic between modernity and tradition; Europeanism and Africanism; the philosophical essay and journalistic discourse; South Africa and Africa; the political and the literary; revolutionary politics and reformist politics. This is a tall order by any reckoning. How did this extraordinary woman achieve this! Among the things that make Fighting Talk so particularly unique and singular is that it captured the political struggles of the last intellectual generation of the New African Movement before its catastrophic defeat in the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960s. It is in this sense that this political review was the absolute obverse of Drum magazine which in all practical purposes eschewed serious political analysis in preference for the cultural manifestations of the Sophiatown Renaissance. Fighting Talk provided the political context of the last great drama of modernity in South Africa which Drum was oblivious to. In this sense Fighting Talk and Drum magazine are the alpha and omega of the decade of the 1950s in which African modernism, if not African modernity, bade farewell to South Africa. Ruth First delineated the political form of this dialectic between progression and regression and between modernity and tradition. Her publishing the complete Freedom Charter on the July 1955 issue of Fighting Talk, just a few weeks after the end of the Congress of the People which had adopted and endorsed its final form, was an expression of her allegiance with arguably the highest point of South African political modernity in the twentieth-century. This excerpt from the document indicates its avant-gardism in the most eloquent manner: “We, the People of South Africa declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people; that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality; that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities; that only a democratic state, based on the will of all people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief; And therefore, we the people of South Africa, black and white together---equals, country-men and brothers---adopt this Fredom Charter. And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.” As a Communist, belonging to the South African Communist Party, Ruth First aligned herself with this African modernity. She never wavered in this commitment until her assassination in Mozambique in 1986. The passion of her unrelenting commitment to the principles and philosophies of the Enlightenment is what defines her as one of the greatest South African modernizers in the twentieth-century. Ruth First was unquestionably one of the extraordinary intellectuals to have emerged from South Africa in the twentieth-century. Her political passion, intellectual vitality, and cultural engagement has been equalled by a few in country, or for that matter, on the continent. What made all this possible was her assuming the editorial position of the monthly political review, Fighting Talk, in the early 1950s. Through editorial decisions, she made the 1950s (Lewis Nkosi characterizes it as the ‘Fabulous Decade’) one of the most fascinating decades in shaping the modernist imagination of South Africans. First’s political and intellectual interventions were among the instrumental processes that made this decade so enthralling and equally traumatizing for many of our older compatriots. The Editors, in effect Ruth First, announced their arrival on the national intellectual stage with the following words: “Fighting Talk has, for many years [founded in February 1942 and folded in Februay 1963 when Ruth First was detained and imprisoned], been the organ of the Springbok Legion. It is no longer. From here on,it is ‘An Independent Monthly Review’, edited and managed by an independent committee of supporters of the Congress movement, and members of the three Congresses, the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress and the South African Congress of Democrats. . . We intend to continue Fighting Talk as a vigorous, outspoken magazine which fights the good fight for the rights of men, and which challenges the ideas and outlook of the white supremacists, because their ideas spell death to democratic institutions, to racial harmony and to peace. Fighting Talk, if we can make it so, will be the voice of the Congress Movement” (“Fighting Talk Changes Hands”, March 1954). This change of direction was at an auspicious moment, situated as it was between the Defiance Campaign of 1952 and the planned Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955, where the final draft of The Freedom Charter was actualized. Coming to self-consciousness as an instrument of historical change at this critical conjuncture, it is not surprising that it set about, and actually succeeded, in overhauling the political imagination of the progressive circles. Given that the historical importance of this political and cultural review is still unrecognized or unacknowledged in our country, nearly 40 years after its demise through political repression, it is necessary to postulate that its significance may yet be discovered to have exceeded that of its two formidable rivals of the 1950s, Drum and Liberation. Fighting Talk forged the unity between politics and culture in a singular process that this two other monthly reviews could not sustain: while Drum studiously avoided politics, Liberation condescended to cultural politics as below its high calling of Marxist and democratic politics. It is perhaps for this reason that the 1950s decade should be designated through Fighting Talk rather than by means of Drum. Having said this, this is not to undervalue the historic moment of Liberation and Drum. Few new monthlies and journals of the following four decades were to be on par with these cultural momentos of the 1950s. Ruth First made Fighting Talk so incomparable by forging on its pages intellectual intercrossings and cultural syntheses of extraordinary fertility: Marxism and modernity; Communism and Nationalism; the dialectic between modernity and tradition; Europeanism and Africanism; the philosophical essay and journalistic discourse; South Africa and Africa; the political and the literary; revolutionary politics and reformist politics. This is a tall order by any reckoning. How did this extraordinary woman achieve this! Among the things that make Fighting Talk so particularly unique and singular is that it captured the political struggles of the last intellectual generation of the New African Movement before its catastrophic defeat in the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960s. It is in this sense that this political review was the absolute obverse of Drum magazine which in all practical purposes eschewed serious political analysis in preference for the cultural manifestations of the Sophiatown Renaissance. Fighting Talk provided the political context of the last great drama of modernity in South Africa which Drum was oblivious to. In this sense Fighting Talk and Drum magazine are the alpha and omega of the decade of the 1950s in which African modernism, if not African modernity, bade farewell to South Africa. Ruth First delineated the political form of this dialectic between progression and regression and between modernity and tradition. Her publishing the complete Freedom Charter on the July 1955 issue of Fighting Talk, just a few weeks after the end of the Congress of the People which had adopted and endorsed its final form, was an expression of her allegiance with arguably the highest point of South African political modernity in the twentieth-century. This excerpt from the document indicates its avant-gardism in the most eloquent manner: “We, the People of South Africa declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people; that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality; that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities; that only a democratic state, based on the will of all people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief; And therefore, we the people of South Africa, black and white together---equals, country-men and brothers---adopt this Fredom Charter. And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.” As a Communist, belonging to the South African Communist Party, Ruth First aligned herself with this African modernity. She never wavered in this commitment until her assassination in Mozambique in 1986. The passion of her unrelenting commitment to the principles and philosophies of the Enlightenment is what defines her as one of the greatest South African modernizers in the twentieth-century.