In August 1982, a parcel bomb went off at the Center for African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. Sent by the South African government’s Special Branch, its target and victim was Ruth First, a lifelong member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), who was fifty-seven years old at the time. Her assassination has since become the stuff of legend, a symbol of the violent brutality of the apartheid government toward its critics in the last decades of its existence.

The murder of First was part of a broader effort by the white minority state to eliminate its opponents following the Soweto Uprising of 1976, which resulted in a revival of (and a generational shift within) the anti-apartheid struggle. Inspired by the ideas of Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness Movement took to the streets of townships across South Africa.

Facing arrest and often worse, many sought refuge and exile in neighboring countries, the so-called Frontline States, which included Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. Counterinsurgency raids by the South African Defense Force and Special Branch units ensued, targeting these activists with little regard for the national sovereignty of the countries where they had taken shelter.