Programme Director
MECs Present
Honourable Ladies
Gentlemen Present
Memory is the storeroom. It is pivotal in the preservation of human experience - trials and tribulations. It is the memory, the synthesised collection of disparate encounters between human and the world that give form and content to one’s character. But as humans we also share collective memory, a set of common experiences, which give rise to the notion of a shared perspective.
Today, we come together because we share collective memory, first as women and as people of South Africa.
As people of South Africa we are conscious of the historical oppression and institutionalised racism that black people had to endure in the hands of the apartheid government. We are conscious of the indignity and humiliation that we had to suffer because black people were not allowed in the cities and towns they helped to build unless they were labourers. We understand the pain of losing your loved ones at the hands of trigger happy police because they were asking to be treated like equals. The Sharpeville Massacre, the June 16 Massacre and many other killings that went unnoticed.
But as women, we know very well about the scourge of triple oppression. We fully understand the oppression suffered at home, the exploitation we are subjected to in the workplace and both the humiliation and oppression we endured purely because of our pigmentation. It was the result of this shared perspective that on August 9, 1956 more than 20 000 women of all races, some with the babies on their backs, from the cities and towns, from homelands and villages, marched to Pretoria the then seat of oppressive government. This march which united women from all walks of life and racial background led by Lillian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Sophie Williams and Radima Moosa sent a loud message that women have had “genoeg” (enough) of racism and its humiliating apartheid laws.
This was a turning point in the struggle for freedom, equality and justice in South Africa. Women joined their male counterparts in the trenches to fight against all forms of oppression. These gallant women fighters never lost sight of the goal within the broader liberation struggle. They knew that their struggle is made more difficult by the fact that they have to fight sexism within the ranks and exploitation of women while engaging in a broader fight for national freedom. They understood that while the national freedom was paramount but the oppression and marginalisation of women was also a struggle to be waged side by side as well as inside and outside the trenches. These women never suffered from any false consciousness. They could identify their interests and distilled that from the enemy’s.
The systemic nature of our structural relations was what they had to fight and defeat. These structural relations have for centuries been propped up by the fallacies of patriarchy. It is this rock of patriarchy that even today as women we still have to demolish. We have to take from where the heroines like Mama Sisulu and Mama Gxowa left in the fight against male domination and exploitation.
Many of these heroines are gone and their memory has to live on, long after many of us have also left this world. However, memory will fade with time if it is not given tangible expression. It is for this reason that we are here today to explore and share ideas on how we can keep the memory of all those women who sacrificed for the freedom of all to live forever. It is their legacy that must be honoured and remembered.
Over time, humans have given tangible expression to the collective memory of their heroes and heroines, amongst others, through the work of art, institutions or monuments. It is our belief as the Gauteng Provincial Government that we need to preserve the memory of women who gave it all so that we can all live in a better world. We thought that it will be befitting than to explore the idea of building a monument in Tshwane for women. It will stand as a reminder that society shall never be truly free until her women are totally emancipated.
As you engage in your discussions, exploring ideas, I urge you to do so with a focused mind and diligence that can be equated to that of our gallant women fighters.
Dankie. Ngiyabonga.
Province
