President lauds women of #TheTotalShutdown
PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa saluted the thousands of women who marched across the country during the #TheTotalShutdown movement, which echoed the more than 20 000 women marching to the Union Buildings in 1956.
Ramaphosa delivered the keynote address during the National Women’s Day Celebration at Mbekweni Rugby Stadium in Paarl yesterday.
The event was hosted by the Department of Women in the Presidency under the theme, “100 Years of Albertina Sisulu, Woman of Fortitude: Women United in Moving South Africa Forward”.
Ramaphosa gave mention to special guest and anti-apartheid activist Sophia Williams-de Bruyn, who was part of that momentous march.
He said like those women 62 years ago, the women who marched last week had demanded that the government address the plight women faced.
“Unlike you, Aunt Sophie, these protesters were met by a government of the people, a government democratically-elected with a clear and unequivocal mandate to transform society,” Ramaphosa said.
“Unlike you, these protesters were met by a government that listens and that is determined to work with all South Africans to rid our country of this scourge.”
Ramaphosa said that in a sense the government had failed to live up to the promise of 1994, by ensuring that the women of the country were able to exercise their constitutional right to peace and security.
The government had agreed that a National Gender Summit should take place on August 31, to forge consensus on approaches to effectively and urgently deal with the crisis of gender-based violence, discrimination against women and gender disparities.
De Bruyn was one of the special guests who included, Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa, Minister of Women in the Presidency Bathabile Dlamini, Land Reform Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and Sisulu’s granddaughter Nontsikelelo Sisulu-Singapi.
Dlamini and Nkoana-Mashabane intervened when activists staged a demonstration with placards as Ramaphosa was about to make his address.
Nkoana-Mashabane, called the women outside and engaged briefly with them, promising to meet with them.
She said she knew about the women’s plight, but could not say whether she had visited any specific farm.
One of her officials would take down their details and she would then receive their document.
She said as a mother and grandmother, who was born on a farm at Magoebaskloof, in Limpopo, she was sympathetic to their concerns.
De Bruyn said: “We knew then, as women do today, that the fundamental transformation of society and the conditions under which they lived depended not only on men.
“But they too needed to be at the coalface of the Struggle.
Mama Sisulu knew this too well and she said: ‘Women are the people who are going to release us of all this oppression and depression.’”