Fight against patriarchy

FIFTY-NINE years ago, a stalwart and courageous group of South African women took to the streets of Pretoria to raise their concerns, not only about the pass laws in general, but specifically about the extension of those laws to black women. Already vastly marginalised, unable to own property and treated like children in their own country, black women’s destinies were to be further damaged. The apartheid regime was determined not to recognise they had rights at all.

So on Sunday, as we mark Women’s Day in our 21-year-old democracy, we should be thinking of that march and the aims of the brave women who potentially took on the might of the National Party’s security forces.

They not only wanted broad human rights for women, and for all South Africans, but they specifically wanted property rights, rights of inheritance and the freedom of women to choose how their lives should play out in the social, political and economic arenas.

Today, much of this has, of course, been secured. Women are treated in law as individuals and legal entities in their own right. They no longer have to have men sign for them when they enter into contracts, unless there is a marital requirement for this, and they no longer have to bow to the wishes of men, or the authorities in general, when they make decisions.

Thus, a woman can have an abortion, buy a house, have medical treatment, take a job and claim her inheritance as a normal part of life.

Yet there are still too many aspects of life for women which undermine this gender equity – such a vital part of the Struggle and of our constitution.

In 2015, women are still not safe, not always free to walk in their communities or in the cities without the threat of harassment and abuse. At worst, women can be, and are, raped at every hour of the day in a country that has otherwise tried valiantly to make them equal citizens. In the rural areas, women’s lives are often dictated by traditional leaders, rather than their own wishes.

Let us continue the fight against patriarchy. It is a fight to which we are all, surely, bound.