Veterans of the 1956 women’s march returned to Pretoria on Women’s Day on Wednesday to march on the Union Buildings as they did 50 years ago.
Elizabeth Ntombizodwa Sibiya (68) and Christina Dikeledi Moloi (70), both from Tsakane in Ekurhuleni, said they were part of the 1956 women’s march.
”We were marching to come here [Union Buildings]. We did not want the dompas [pass book],” Sibiya said.
She said she was ”so, so glad” to be back again on Wednesday. ”The thing we were fighting for, we got it.”
Both women walked from Strijdom Square to the Union Buildings with thousands of other cheering marchers, mostly women. ”I am feeling very, very well,” said Moloi.
Others remembered their late mothers who had marched in 1956. ”I was at school. My mother was here,” said Miriam Mahlangu from Brakpan. ”If she was still alive, she would be here. She said to me, don’t leave the struggle. Today we have everything.”
Women’s Day commemorates the 1956 women’s march.
Men and women joined Wednesday’s march, but the front of the march was dominated by cheering women who sang: ”The women are going to get into Parliament.” They were being led by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the 1956 event in which 20 000 women marched on Pretoria to protest against the extension of the apartheid government’s pass laws to black women.
The benefits of freedom must reach everyone, women told President Thabo Mbeki at the Union Buildings. ”This constitutes a failure when we say the fruits of our liberation have not reached our women. It constitutes a challenge,” Mbeki agreed in response.
The marchers, led by struggle veterans Adelaide Tambo, Ruth Mompati and one of the leaders of the 1956 women’s march, Sophie Williams-De Bruyn, handed Mbeki a memorandum that called for the benefits of freedom to reach the poor. ”We believe there is still a lot more work to be done,” they told Mbeki.
The women met the president at the women’s memorial on the steps of the Union Buildings. ”You have struck the women, you have struck a rock,” they said in memory of the marchers of 50 years ago.
Later, Tambo said the years after the march have been ”horrendous”. She said the poor still need electricity, water and education. ”We still have the battle of the informal settlement.”
Struggle not over
She also addressed the thousands that took part in the march and said the elderly need the younger generation to fight for their rights. ”I am 77 years old. The majority of women in this country are my children. Why are you not fighting for me?” she asked.
”There are many difficulties still in our path,” Albertina Sisulu, another struggle veteran, said in a message read on her behalf. She urged women to keep fighting for equality.
Williams-De Bruyn said it took ”enormous courage” to march on the ”citadel of power” in 1956. She urged women to work together. ”You cannot do it alone. You must do it with one another.”
Mbeki told marchers to remember their heroines and be inspired by them. ”The generation of 1956 has succeeded to pass on to its children and grandchildren the determination to struggle for a better life,” Mbeki said, adding that the struggle for equality is not over.
”We should ask ourselves what we have done in the past 12 years to remove all the laws and practices that discriminate against women.”
He spoke out strongly against violence against women and children. ”None of us is free unless the women of our country are free.”
Mbeki later unveiled a sculpture in front of the union buildings by Noria Mabasa.
‘You have struck a rock’
The 1956 marchers had intended to meet prime minister JG Strijdom, who was not there. They sang: ”Now you have touched the women, Strijdom! You have struck a rock. You will be crushed,” which has now become a catch-phrase for women’s movements across the country.
By the 1950s only African men were required to carry pass books, which restricted where people could live, work and travel, although the law had earlier applied to Chinese and Indian immigrants as well.
Despite the risk of being imprisoned by the state’s security forces, the activists fearlessly marched to the office of Strijdom to present a petition bearing thousands of signatures.
”I never thought, but only hoped, that one day the women of this country would be free,” Williams-De Bruyn recalled.
”This was the first time ever in the rule of the apartheid government that black people, worst of all women, ever set foot and walked on their ‘holy grail’, the forbidden soil — the Union Buildings,” the 68-year-old told the Mail & Guardian.
”After Lillian [Ngoyi, another of the four leaders] 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 [in Zulu] You Have Struck a Rock, You Have Struck a Woman.
”Now, 50 years on, looking at the faces and complexions in our national Parliament … 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,” said Williams-De Bruyn.
The pass laws were only fully abolished in the 1980s.
Since South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, August 9 has been a public holiday and the month celebrated as Women’s Month, with festivities including a women’s Parliament. — Sapa, AFP