P Jordan: Women in South African History book launch

Speech by Dr Z Pallo Jordan Minister of Arts and Culture at the
launch of the book "Women in South African history," Pretoria

7 December 2006

On 7 December 2005 the Cabinet tasked the Department of Arts and Culture to
lead the country in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Women's Anti-Pass
March of August 1956.

On 8 March, International Women's Day, we unveiled a significant portion of
a year-long programme of which tonight's book launch is a significant part. We
will round of the commemoration on 8 March 2007, International Women's Day, was
born in the struggle for equal rights waged by women during the first two
decades of the twentieth century.

It was inaugurated by the parties and the movements of the left. In Europe
it was the Social Democratic Parties, the trade unions and the working class
women's suffrage movements that led the way. In the Americas it was the
Socialist Party's national women's committee who first sounded the clarion call
to dedicate one day to women's struggle for equality and the franchise. In 1913
the date 8 March was designated as International Women's Day after the famous
"bread and roses strike" by women workers in New England.

Ironically, here in South Africa in 1912, the administrator of the then
Orange Free State sought to extend the pass laws to apply to African women.

To protest this infringement, in March 1912, the African and Coloured women
of the Orange Free State sent a petition to the then Prime Minister Louis
Botha, appealing for redress. Like another Prime Minister, some 40 years later,
Louis Botha did not have the courage to meet the women's delegation. Instead,
the delegation of six women from Bloemfontein was directed to meet the then
Minister of Native Affairs, Henry Burton, to whom they handed their petition
bearing 5 000 signatures, demanding that Parliament repeal the pass law
ordinances of the Orange Free State.

The government's failure to respond sparked one of the earliest defiance
campaigns in this country. Hundreds of women from Jagersfontein, Winburg and
Bloemfontein were arrested in the course of that campaign. Chanting slogans and
singing the women confronted the police and even engaged them in pitched
battles. Faced with the determined resistance of the African women of the
Orange Free State, the administrator finally relented. In 1919 the ordinance
was allowed to lapse.

It was in recognition of the central role women have played in the struggle
for freedom that the democratic government declared 9 August, South Africa's
Women's Day in 1995. Government took that decision as a tribute, not only to
the thousands of women who marched on that day in 1956, but also as a tribute
to the pioneers of the women's movement in this country, dating back to 1912,
when Mrs Charlotte Maxeke led the way in establishing the African National
Congress (ANC) Women's League, encouraging women to become actively involved in
the struggle for freedom.

South African Women's Day, 9 August, affirmed the thousands of women, of all
races, who had struggled for the enfranchisement of South African women during
the 1920s, only to see their struggles betrayed by the pact government of
Hertzog that extended the franchise exclusively to white women. It is a tribute
to the thousands of stalwarts who were at the forefront of the working women's
struggles during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that led to formation of powerful
unions in later years.

The roll call is far too long for us to recall all their names. We count
among them Charlotte Maxeke, that indomitable educationist and freedom fighter
who after graduating from a university in the United States, founded the
Wilberforce Institute in Evaton. We recall too the names of Cissy Gool and of
her sisters-in-law, Janub and Amina who were amongst the leaders of the
National Liberation League and the Non-European United Front of the 1930s.

The names of Ray Alexander Simons, Elizabeth Mafikeng and Elizabeth Abrahams
will always be associated with the struggles of women workers. We also remember
the names of Mrs Amina Pahad and Mrs Khadijah Christopher, who were amongst the
first volunteers to occupy the site of the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign on
Umbilo Road in Durban. We recall too the names of Lillian Ngoyi, Dora Tamana,
Winifred Siqwana, Ida Mntwana, Bertha Mkhize, Florence Matomela, Raheema Moosa,
Sophie Williams-De Bruyn, Helen Joseph and other stalwarts of the 1950s, who
led militant women's formations fighting for the rights of workers and the
rights of women. The indomitable Mrs Annie Silinga, who till her dying day
refused to carry a pass!

There are the hundreds of women who joined the armed struggle, participating
in combat and some of the most dangerous, death-defying underground activities
both inside and outside South Africa. There were also the hundreds of women who
passed through the prisons of apartheid as detainees and as political
prisoners. There are our martyrs, amongst whom we count Ruth First and Dulcie
September whose murders still remain unexplained even today.

We recall too that stalwart of liberalism in South Africa a tradition that
is regrettably being sullied by the "fight back" politics of our latter day
"liberals" Helen Suzman, whose probing questions helped expose the crimes of
apartheid during the 1970s and 1980s. There were also the women, who formed the
Black Sash, first to protest against the disenfranchisement of the Coloured
voters during the 1950s, but who later played an important role in the broad
front of anti-apartheid forces that developed in the last three decades of
apartheid.

The massive women's march on Pretoria of 9 August 1956 was the culmination
of months of painstaking, unglamorous organisational work. Almost 20 000 women,
drawn from all racial groups, managed to reach the Union Buildings in what was
one of the biggest mass demonstrations of that decade. An unknown number did
not reach Pretoria because their buses were turned back, detained and were
otherwise harassed by a government that was deaf to the demands of the ordinary
South African.

Mrs Sophie Williams-De Bruyn explained that despite the scepticism of many
of the male leaders of the ANC, the women were determined to proceed with their
march; organising from city to city, from town to town, from village to
village, they succeeded in galvanising thousands. Working out of a basement in
the ANC's Johannesburg head office, they produced the leaflets, the explanatory
pamphlets in a number of African languages and arranged accommodation, food and
transport for the thousands of women who came on that march.

It was an impressive feat of logistical planning!

The militancy displayed by the women surpassed all expectations. In the
rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal open rebellion and armed incidents took place. In
the area that today is called the North West province, there were also
outbreaks of rebellious activity as opposition to the law took root. In the
Limpopo province the resistance to the pass laws merged with the resistance to
the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951.

As in 1919, the White supremacist state beat a retreat, but on this occasion
employed guile to obtain its objectives. An administrative measure, quietly
appended to the admission regulations for a number of training courses,
atomised resistance. Having attained that beachhead, the apartheid government
enforced the pass laws after 1963.

The Women's Charter, adopted by the Federation of South African Women
shortly after its inauguration in 1954, demanded the full franchise for all
South Africans, equality of opportunity, equal pay for equal work, equal rights
to property, equality in marriage, the removal of all laws and customs that
denied women equality, paid maternity leave for working mothers and free
compulsory education for all children. It is a matter of pride that many of the
demands in that Charter have been realised in our Constitution.

Despite this achievement, there remain a number of degrading laws affecting
specifically African women, which have still to be expunged from our statute
books.

Every community in this country derives from powerful, patriarchal
traditions. We have witnessed public displays of some of the more disturbing
aspects of the aggressive masculine behaviour these traditions have bred during
the course of this year. In their defence those who engage in such behaviour
invariably invoke the sanctity of cultural practices handed down over
centuries. This particular defence is often raised when conservatives are
resisting the demands of women and youth. "According to our traditions," is an
often heard refrain when reasoned argument fails.

While the constitution is very clear on the rights of the individual, it is
less clear about the claims of cultural groups. The tension between "cultural
rights" and the wider social good of a just, non-racist, non-sexist and
democratic society that government is pursuing is not always readily evident.
But it is a nettle that has to be grasped if we are not to betray the
expectations of South African women.

It is going to be of paramount importance for us who aspire to give voice to
the aspirations, hopes, and dreams of the people of our continent to be seized
with these matters. The book we are launching tonight forms part of the growing
literature on subordinated classes, genders and races in society. By recounting
the roles assumed by women during various periods of South African history, it
directly challenges the assertions and claims of the defenders of patriarchy by
demonstrating that the image of women, especially African women, as silent,
non-participant bystanders in history is not only false, but a function of
present day ideology in the service of particular vested interests.

If the authors have succeeded in sweeping away centuries of
misrepresentation and gender type-casting, they have done us all a great
service.

I warmly congratulate the authors on that achievement. I am pleased that the
Department of Arts and Culture is associated with this book. Please buy it, and
read it!

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
7 December 2006

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