Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi criticised the proposed Protection of Information Bill [B6 - 2010] during the Ruth First memorial lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) on Tuesday.

If Ruth First was alive, she would read the proposed bill and ask where all the democrats had gone, he said, adding that it made a mockery of her work as a journalist.

First was an investigative journalist between 1947 and 1982, and was at the heart of the liberation movement in southern Africa, participating in key moments of the struggle against apartheid struggle, including helping to draft the Freedom Charter.

She would be shocked if she came back and saw the deterioration in the country's economy, education and health systems and the vast disparity between social classes, said Vavi, asking: "Was it worth her struggle?"

Jacklyn Cock, a member of the Ruth First Committee at Wits, said that First was the editor of the radical newspapers "The Guardian" and "New Age" and wrote numerous books that engaged with crucial issues of the day.

In 1956, she was one of 156 people arrested for high treason and spent 177 days in solitary confinement.

She died in 1982 when a parcel bomb, sent to her by apartheid agents, exploded in her office at a university in Maputo.

Other speakers were 2010 Ruth First fellows Christa Kuljian, a writer, and Crystal Orderson, an SABC journalist.

Vavi ended his speech saying: "Let the 28th anniversary of Ruth First's death re-ignite our passion for economic justice, our hatred for inequality and our impatience with reformism. The working class will not wait forever."