June 19, 2026
The World Cup 2026 opened on Thursday, June 11, with Mexico playing South Africa. It appeared the entire Africa turned out against our sister African country. In the 1990s, this would have been the reverse. That was when South Africa held a lot of promise for the human race as it busted Apartheid and announced the death of that evil system.
Indeed, South Africa produced some of the best Africans in contemporary history: Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki, Joe Slovo, Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Solomon Mahlangu, Steve Biko and Chris Hani.
Among the best in this legion was Heloise Ruth First, whose entire life and existence was to liberate the African continent from colonization and backwardness. She was born into the struggle with her father, Julius First, who migrated from Latvia when he was ten, and her mother, Matilda Leveta, who migrated to South Africa from Lithuania when she was four, both being two of the founders of the Anti-Apartheid Communist Party.
First lived in the struggle, attending the University of Witwatersrand with fellow activists like Nelson Mandela and Eduardo Mondlane. The latter was elected in 1962 as the founding president of the FRELIMO liberation movement in Mozambique and, like First, was killed in a bomb attack.
