In 1956, on the day of the big march I ranked among South Africa’s fortunate: I was lucky enough to be free to be able to march to the Union Buildings, the centre of the apartheid domination.
I was also one of the four women chosen to lead the march. Lillian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and I took the thousands of protests to the Nationalist prime minister, JG Strijdom, and dumped them on his desk.
Strijdom, however, was afraid of us — he ran away.
This was 50 years ago and the memories of that day are still clear and fresh in my mind. I never thought, but only hoped, that one day women of this country will be free. As the African idiom goes: ”You free a woman, you free a nation.”
There were 20 000 of us there that day, but what history does not record is the thousands who were stopped by the police and told to go back, full buses that were turned around and many women who were man-handled and thrown in jail for the day to ensure their non-appearance at the Union Buildings.
The women sat on the lush, immaculately manicured lawns, some with their babies beside them. Others had their babies on their backs carrying their meagre lunches, depending on no one but themselves.
When word went around in the Union Buildings that there was this huge invasion of black women, taking over the grounds, Afrikaner male clerks and administrators and a lesser number of white female employees flocked out of the doors and began to perch themselves on the window sills and the balconies.
From our view it appeared that every nook and cranny was occupied.
This was the first time ever in the rule of the apartheid government that black people, worst of all women, ever sat foot and walked on their ”holy grail”, the forbidden soil — the Union Buildings. I still wonder to this day what went through their minds.
Those 20 000 women proudly, with dignity, graciously and in a disciplined manner marched up the steps of the Union Buildings.
There was no jostling or pushing one another to get to the front. We four leaders walked together down the middle path that the women had left open.
When we came to the end of the free way and turned, the women fell in behind us, following us up all the way and across the terraces. There was an almost eerie silence.
The multitude of women was truly magnificent, some with babies on their backs, Indian women in their colourful saris, and rural women and others in their traditional garments, displaying myriad colours.
And then, of course, there were black, green and gold uniforms, the colours of the African National Congress.
We observed half an hour of silence in which one could have heard a pin drop, after singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
Standing with Helen, Lillian and Rahima, with thousands of petitions about to be dispatched to Strijdom’s office, I realised we had really entered the belly of the dragon.
And then the hour arrived that we had to slay our dragon, namely deliver our demands to the prime minister. First Lillian addressed the women, and then we four marched in a dignified manner to Strijdom’s office.
But when we arrived at his office and knocked, we were only met by a female employee and a male clerk. We were told that Strijdom was not there. We partly handed over, partly dumped, the petitions in his office.
A significant factor that united us in the march was that, with few exceptions, the women were drawn from the poorest of the poor.
They had very little consciousness of their entitlement to anything such as justice, equality, freedom and a share in the resources of the land. Their state of oppression was so severe that they almost had no concept of their self-worth.
It was in that respect alone that August 9 was a cataclysmic event, for it burst through all the barriers of race and patriarchy that smothered the hearts, souls and intellects of those women and set them free in one great song.
After Lillian told the women that the prime minister had run away, the women instantly and spontaneously broke into singing the famous song that would become the women’s struggle anthem, Wathinta Abafazi Wathinta Imbokodo, which means You Have Struck a Rock, You have Struck a Woman.
This song was never pre-composed or even rehearsed, but it embodied the strength of the women.
After the singing, the march ended. As graciously and with the same dignity they displayed when they marched up the steps, the women walked back down.
As much as they were angry and disappointed, they contained their anger.
Not a single woman trashed the immaculate grounds of the Union Building, not because they were afraid of going to prison but because of respect.
They had respect for themselves, respect for their fellow women and comrades and, lastly, respect for their leaders. Vandalising the Union Building would have been disrespectful to the cause.
Now 50 years on, looking at the faces and complexions in our national Parliament, the provincial legislatures and other sectors of our society, it surely does not need a rocket scientist to see that the long journey our women have travelled was the right one.
As women we survived the injustices and indignities of racism. We emerged phoenix-like from the ashes, stronger, better, more matured.
Sophia Williams-De Bruyn is a veteran of the 1956 women’s march and the deputy speaker of the Gauteng legislature