[ Home ] [ Speeches & statements ]

13 August 2006

During the month of August 2006, South Africa celebrates fifty years of women's resistance. We remember the 20 000 women who marched to the Union Buildings on the 9th of August 1956, to protest against the extension of pass laws to women. We celebrate the role women played over the years in the struggle for freedom and the role they are playing now in the reconstruction and development of our country. We recommit and rededicate ourselves to re-doubling our efforts to defeat gender inequality and oppression, so that we can all say we are truly free.

When women marched on the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956, they were establishing the foundations on which we build today. By marching on the Union Buildings women marched on the stronghold of power in apartheid South Africa. They also defied the social forces that defined them as non-citizens.

I want to thank the organisers of this Special Seminar looking at violence against one of the most vulnerable groups in our society, the widows. I thank the Mayor of the Hibiscus Coast Municipality, Her Worship Councillor Nolwazi Shusha. As a citizen of her municipality in Ward 15, I wish to acknowledge her support for development in my ward. We have begun the process of launching our Ward Committee. The youth in my ward are pleased that the municipality is upgrading the sports ground and we now have a mobile clinic that comes to our ward, which we greatly appreciate.

I also want to thank the Provincial MEC for Transport, Safety and Community Liaison, Mr Bheki Cele for his role and that of his department who have formed a partnership with the Hibiscus Coast Municipality in making this seminar happen. I believe it is this kind of partnerships that will help alleviate and eradicate completely the scourge of gender-based violence, especially as it affects vulnerable groups in our society. Members of the security forces in the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the criminal justice system have a huge role in upholding the law and ensuring social justice.

Today we are free from political oppression. But, we are not yet free from economic and gender oppression. Even though the democratic government has begun to redress the historic imbalances in the allocation of basic services, too many people, women and girls in particular still go to bed hungry. Recent statistics have shocked us into realising that more than half of our people survive on less than 20 rand a day. More than 60 percent of these people are in the rural areas. Too many people are without shelter, especially those who try to escape rural poverty by going to urban areas. As we try to eradicate shacks, more come up all the time.

Even as we have tried to make basic education available to every child and adult, we still see many children, especially girls, dropping out of school, either because they are pregnant or their parents cannot afford to keep them in school. We see too many people, mostly women who are without the necessary skills they need to make a living. Too many people are unemployed or under-employed, or earn far too little for their labour. Women workers who came to the Women's Parliament in 2005 told Parliament that women are the main victims of casualisation and retrenchments.

At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the World Court of Women Against War, for Peace we heard moving accounts of some of the pain and violence women experienced during the years of struggle and continue to experience today. Women were exiled, sexually violated, imprisoned and killed. In their own homes and in their communities, at the workplace, on the countryside, women suffered and continue to suffer sexual exploitation, gender-based violence, political oppression and class exploitation. At the conference, held from 5-6 August 2006 in Bloemfontein to launch the Progressive Women's Movement of South Africa, we heard how women on farms still continue to be vulnerable to exploitation. A young woman told the conference about gender-based violence suffered by women farm workers, where the bosses sexually exploit them, sometimes with the knowledge and approval of the boss's wife. The conference also heard about the high levels of women who fall ill and die from preventable illnesses, like tuberculosis (TB), pneumonia, cervical cancer, heart disease, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Even though women suffered and continue to suffer all these hardships, they did not sit back. They began to organise like they are doing today. They joined the liberation movement and fought side by side with the men. They formed women's organisations and through these organisations they put the issues affecting women on the agenda of the liberation movement. They formed alliances across the class, race and geographic divide and united to become a formidable force. Women in the civics, in the trade union movement, in the church, at universities and schools, in the countryside, young and old, educated and illiterate came together in the Federation of South African Women which organised and led the 1956 march.

Let me stress that women's struggles did not begin and end in 1956. It began years before, as illustrated by the 1913 protests against passes and land dispossession. Women were in the 1952 Defiance Campaign. They were in the Alexandra bus boycotts, saying "Azikhwelwa". They were in the potato boycotts. Women were in Kliptown when the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955 and it is important to point out that women had prepared their women demands for the Freedom Charter, which are contained in the Women's Charter of 1954. Women of Natal made a mark in history when they led the protest against the filling of dipping tanks in 1959. In 1960 women of Cato Manor, in Durban, made history when they organised against beerhalls, in KwaBhokweni. These were beerhalls set up by the Durban Municipality where men would spend their hard-earned income, while their children and wives starved. We remember Dorothy Nyembe who served eighteen years in prison. We remember Gladys Manzi of Umlazi, Mary Thiphe of Chesterville and Florence Mkhize of Lamontville who were banned.

Women protested against removals. We remember the struggles of rural women which produced leaders like Mam' Lydia Kompe-Ngwenya, one of our stalwarts who is a member of parliament.

In the sixties and seventies women continued the resistance. They were in Sharpeville, in Umkhonto weSizwe and the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). They were in the 1976 youth uprisings. The world-renowned picture, which depicts these struggles, shows a young woman on the side of the young man carrying the lifeless body of young Hector Peterson. In the eighties when the United Democratic Front (UDF) was formed in protest against the Tricameral Government and urban reform, women were there in their numbers.

Through the civic organisations they organised against incorporation into Bantustans. They fought against the rising cost of living. They demanded that troops of the South African Defence Force (SADF) should get out of the townships. White women also organised. White women contributed through the Black Sash and other service organisations like Rape Crisis. They formed support for young white men who were resisting recruitment into the army.

Women who went into exile continued the struggle. They organised and raised issues affecting them and other women through the African National Congress (ANC) Women's Section. They mobilised support from the Anti-Apartheid movement and built international solidarity against apartheid.

Yesterday at the Bat Centre we honoured women in the arts who also struggled and made a huge contribution through music, arts, and the visual and print media. We honoured Busi Mhlongo, Amahotella Queens, Jo Thorpe and Nesta Nala who have contributed to restoring our dignity through the arts.

President Thabo Mbeki honoured the women who marched in 1956 and urged us to continue that struggle until women are totally emancipated. He called on all sectors of our society to get involved in this struggle, men and women.

The General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Dr Blade Nzimande has paid tribute to the role played by communist women who have had a long and heroic contribution and role in South African women's struggles, women like Ray Alexander and Josie Mpama who consistently and actively participated and directed the energies of the SACP towards women's organisation and the national liberation struggle and the struggle for socialism. Ray Alexander, Lillian Ngoyi, Dora Tamana and Florence Matomela were at the forefront of fighting for working class and poor women. More recently, we have women like Jenny Schreiner and Thenjiwe Mthintso who continue to wage the struggle for women's total emancipation. We must build on this legacy.

Today in the democratic order, which women have helped to build we have made tremendous gains. Our Constitution has entrenched the right to gender equality. The Bill of Rights contains a number of provisions that benefit women, like reproductive rights, the right to choice, equal treatment and affirmative action, the right to human and personal security and access to socio-economic rights. Our laws grant women the right to inheritance and equality in marriage. It recognises customary marriages and gives women in these unions’, equal rights as women married under western law.

We must defend and demand these rights. We must organise to make them real for all women, especially working class and poor women, vulnerable women like young women, women with disabilities, widowed women, abused women, victims of domestic, social and sexual violence and refugees.

The Women's Parliament this year focused on human trafficking. Women and girls are victims of trafficking. Parliament heard that many women and girls are trafficked to be used as sex slaves and are subjected to bonded labour. Women are used as mules in the drug trade and often end up in foreign jails, far away from home. We must fight against trafficking in all its forms. We must educate our communities, particularly women about the dangers of trafficking and we must demand better protection from law enforcement agents. We must agitate for the passing of legislation against human trafficking, which the South African Law Commission is busy working on.

As the backbone of the society women must make their voices heard. We must join and form organisations that will take up these issues. Women's organisations must rise up and fight the scourge of disease and poverty. It is us women that are most affected by preventable illnesses, which the Progressive Women's Movement of South Africa was told about last week. Women and children are dying needlessly. Our maternal and child mortality statistics are telling us to wake up. If we do not wake up now, future generations will judge us harshly for not building on the women's march fifty years ago and the history of women's resistance, which I have just outlined.

Let us build the culture of extended families within our communities. Why throw away your left over food when your neighbour is left to starve? What example are we setting when all we want is to accumulate more and more wealth and possessions for ourselves while others have to go without? Some of us are busy chasing black economic empowerment (BEE) deals. We are busy fighting over tenders and see political power as a stepping-stone to personal wealth.

As President Mbeki said on Women's Day, the South African Progressive Women's Movement must be a revolutionary movement. This means it must be an activist movement, entrenched in the struggles of the most oppressed. It must not be built by bureaucrats, but from the bottom up. As a start, it must collect data on initiatives already on the ground, what women have done to make ends meet and to sustain their families.

President Mbeki has pronounced his preference for a woman to succeed him as President of the ANC and the Republic. While I support this call in principle, I wish to caution against the temptation for the South African Progressive Women's Movement to use the call for a woman president as its platform. The call for a woman leader of the African National Congress and the country should be done within the structures of the ANC and its alliance. This is how we have proceeded in the past, even with the call for the 50-50 quota for women. As the South African Progressive Women's Movement our task is to take the organic struggles of women thereby winning their support. We cannot as the elite stand on a hill and make this call on behalf the poor and marginalised for a woman to lead South Africa. They will make the call themselves through their political structures.

The task of the Women's Movement is to win the support of women, who form the majority in our country, by supporting and leading their campaigns. Organically grown campaigns like church groups, youth groups, women's saving schemes, burial societies, stokvels and co-operatives must be strengthened and they must form the basis on which the South African Progressive Women's Movement must build. The only consistent platform for building a progressive and revolutionary women's movement is by taking up issues that daily confront women, especially working class and poor women who are the majority of the economically oppressed and marginalised. They continue to bear the brunt of the growing economic inequality in our country, despite our economy growing at an unprecedented level. Quite clearly therefore this movement must be led by the working class and poor women themselves. Remember the slogan, "Nothing about us without us"? This must be the basis on which we build.

As part of building the South African Progressive Women's Movement and building on the struggles women have waged over the years, I have proposed to the Office on the Status of Women in the Premier's office that we initiate a campaign to document the role played by women of this province. Through this process I believe we can create the space for women to heal and to move forward, having acknowledged their pain and their contribution. In this way we will be creating the conditions for development and true emancipation for women who suffered various forms of violence.

This process has received a great boost from the Minister of Communications, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Cassaburi, who has highlighted the role played by women like the late Dr Mncadi from Ixopo. She has committed to help us raise the funds for a memorial to be built in honour of these women. The Speaker of the Sisonke District Municipality, Councillor Cynthia Ntabeni and the Mayor of uMgungundlovu District Municipality support this initiative. Her Worship Bongi Sithole will begin in Sisonke Municipality where we have a rich history of women's resistance. We have the support of the province through the Office on the Status of Women in the office of the Premier, Comrade Sibusiso Ndebele. These are the women of Ixopo and surrounding areas who resisted land dispossession.

The process will be taken to other parts of the province like eMgungundlovu where women were victims of political violence, in particular the eight days war. It must come to our district here in Ugu, where many women lost their homes and loved ones in the political violence. The process should go to eMsinga, where women were caught in crossfire of the so-called tribal wars. We must build on this momentum and prepare to celebrate the role of the rural women of Natal in 1959 and the Campaign against Beerhalls of 1960. We should celebrate and honour the struggles waged by working women and our women students who turned their schools and universities into sites of struggle.

In the spirit of honouring women's resistance and struggle, I want to end with the words of the SACP General Secretary, Comrade Blade Nzimande, in his tribute to communist women. He said, "The complete emancipation of women must be seen as an integral component of the struggle for socialism and this is the only basis for consolidating and safeguarding the national democratic revolution".

Malibongwe!

Enquiries:
Mabel Dlamini
Director
Office of the Deputy Minister
Health Ministerial Services
Republic of South Africa
Tel: (012) 312 0924 / (021) 461 4560/1
Fax: (012) 312 0854 / (021) 461 9203
Cell: 082 376 2677

Issued by: Department of Health
13 August 2006