Deputy Minister in the Presidency For Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities Republic of South Africa Remarks by Ms Mmapaseka Steve Letsike, MP at the 2026 National Women’s Day Celebration on 9 August 2026 Pretoria
Thank you, Programme Directors;
His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa;
Ms Sindisiwe Chikunga, Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities and all Ministers and Deputy Ministers present;
Ms Thoko Didiza, Speaker of the National Assembly;
Mr Panyaza Lesufi, Premier of the Gauteng Province and all MEC’s present from Gauteng and all of South Africa’s provinces;
Members of Parliament and Provincial Legislatures;
Representatives from the Diplomatic Corps;
Distinguished guests and Fellow South Africans;
And, most importantly, the women of South Africa,
There is something profoundly moving about standing on these grounds today.
It was 70 years ago today, when more than 20,000 women came to these Union Buildings to demand freedom. They could not have known exactly what South Africa would look like 70 years later. But they knew that their daughters deserved a country fundamentally different from the one they had inherited.
And we must begin today by saying: their struggle was not in vain, as the South Africa of 2026 is profoundly different. - 3 -
Women who were once legally treated as minors now stand as judges, Ministers, scientists, entrepreneurs, farmers, engineers, artists and leaders of our democratic institutions.
Women constitute more than 40% of our Parliament, and for the first time in our history, a woman, Chief Justice Mandisa Maya, heads our judiciary. Women’s attainment of tertiary qualifications has risen substantially since 1996 and now exceeds that of men.
Democracy has expanded reproductive freedom, strengthened protection against domestic and sexual violence, recognised the rights of women in customary marriages, outlawed workplace discrimination and opened spaces of political and economic participation previously denied to millions.
These gains matter, and they extend to women in all their diversity.
Our Constitution declared that equality could not depend on whether you are Black or white, rich or poor, heterosexual or lesbian, bisexual or transgender, whether you live with a disability, or whether you were born in Sandton, Soweto or a village many kilometres from the nearest city. That was revolutionary.
But perhaps the real question in 2026 is whether every woman can yet feel that Constitution in her life.
Can the unemployed young woman feel it after sending her hundredth job application?
Can the woman with a disability feel it when she cannot enter a building? - 4 -
Can the lesbian woman feel it when prejudice follows her into her community?
Can the mother feel it when the cost of food, transport and electricity consumes her income?
Can a woman feel free if she is afraid in her own home?
We ask these questions not because democracy has failed, but because democracy has given us the tools with which to confront what remains unfinished.
Democracy did not promise that centuries of patriarchy, racism and economic exclusion would disappear simply because we adopted a Constitution. What it did was fundamentally change the terms on which we confront them. It gave the woman experiencing discrimination a right to equality. It gave the survivor of violence a right to freedom and security of the person. It gave women reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. It gave those women previously pushed to the margins, including lesbian, bisexual and transgender women the constitutional language with which to insist: I belong here too!
That distinction matters. The persistence of inequality is not an argument for abandoning our constitutional democracy; it is an argument for completing its work. Our task is to close the distance between the rights we have won and the lives our people are actually able to live.
Fellow South Africans, we are unrelenting to maintain that transformation is not an event that occurred in 1994 or when we adopted the Constitution in 1996. It is the continuing work of making freedom material by turning equality before the law into equality of opportunity, bodily autonomy into genuine agency, political representation into economic power, and constitutional dignity into dignity that can be felt in the everyday lives of women.
That is the unfinished business of our democracy, and indeed, that is what makes this Women’s Day different.
We mark 70 years since the Women’s March and 30 years since the adoption of our Constitution. We do so in the first Women’s Day since gender-based violence and femicide was classified as a national disaster.
We therefore stand between achievement and unfinished business, but there is another reason why 2026 demands something particular from this generation of women.
The gains we have made are no longer only incomplete; some of them are actively under attack.
Across the world, we are witnessing an increasingly organised anti-gender movement seeking to reverse hard-won freedoms. It often arrives in language that sounds familiar and comforting, in the name of “family values”, religion, culture or the protection of children. But beneath some of these campaigns lies a politics of fear and misinformation that seeks to restrict sexual and reproductive health and rights, erode bodily autonomy, attack LGBTI persons, and return decisions about women’s bodies and lives to institutions and individuals other than women themselves.
We must resist the false choice between our values and our rights. African families do not become stronger when women have less agency. Culture is not protected by inequality. Faith is not strengthened by discrimination.
And children are not protected by denying them knowledge, healthcare or the ability to live without fear.
The women of 1956 understood something that the women of 2026 must remember: rights that were fought for can also be lost.
Our generation therefore inherits not only the responsibility to extend freedom, but also the responsibility to defend it. We cannot allow misinformation to persuade us to surrender constitutional gains for which generations before us sacrificed so much.
The Constitution belongs to those who came before us, but we hold it in trust for those who will come after us. Our daughters must inherit more freedom than we did, not less.
The task of our generation is to take the promise already written into our Constitution and make it lived reality in the household, the workplace, the clinic, the classroom, the farm, the boardroom and the street because the women of 1956 fought against a pass that determined where a Black woman could go.
Our responsibility is to dismantle every remaining barrier that determines how far any woman can go. And so, when we recite the Preamble today, let us not speak these words as ritual.
Let us hear the voices of the women who made them possible. Let us recognise how far we have travelled. And let us recommit ourselves to ensuring that their promise reaches every South African, in all our beautiful diversity. - 7 -
Fellow South Africans, I invite you to recite with me:
“We, the people of South Africa,
Recognise the injustices of our past;
Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;
Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and
Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.
We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to—
Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.
May God protect our people.
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.
God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.
Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.”
I thank you!
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