DAUGHTERS OF THUNDER
MY LITTLE grandson, Seth, from Cape Town visited me in mid-June. As soon as he arrived, after a good few affectionate hugs, he went to the large poster in my entrance hall, and asked me what the picture was all about.
I found this interesting. He has visited me on several occasions, but this was the first time he actually asked about this poster. As a growing 6-year-old, he was clearly becoming more observant of the world around him.
Of course, I was only too happy to narrate the story of the picture to him. I brought out my iPad, scrolled to the relevant narrative and, around his favourite teatime snacks, proceeded to tell him one of the great stories of our liberation history.
The children of today live in a very different world to that which we knew, and it is good for them to be transported to earlier times, to appreciate that the past was another country…
The mounted poster, given to me by a dear friend, Professor Daisy Pillay, on my recent birthday, is the iconic photograph of the 1956 women’s march to the Union Buildings.
In the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible we read that there is a proper season for all things. A time to laugh and a time to weep. A time for war and a time for peace (though it seems in some places that the time for war is unending!).
We, in South Africa, 24 years into our democracy, are living in a time of memory… A time when we remember the past. We remember especially the heroic actions of those – both men and women – who laid down their lives for the freedom you and I enjoy today.
If you look at our present calendar of public holidays, you will appreciate those events of the past which have deep significance in our history.
● March 21: Sharpeville Day (where the police killed 60 of our compatriots protesting against the pernicious pass laws in 1960).
● June 16: Soweto Day, where police brutality against protesting youth in Soweto in 1976 marked another dramatic moment in South African liberation history. We recall the deeds of brave young students who stood up to the apartheid police and their dogs. South Africa was never the same after that.
On Thursday August 9, we commemorate Women’s Day in South Africa. We celebrate courageous women in the liberation history of this country, women who defied authority to fight injustice and oppression during the height of apartheid… women who laid down their lives, with others, for the freedom we enjoy today.
We should never forget that and sanitise our history by marking the day with frivolous celebration. We must be responsible about the way we honour, remember and commemorate the legacy we have inherited.
The history related to Women’s Day in South Africa is well known. In 1956, 20 000 women from the four corners of the country marched to Pretoria. They converged on the Union Buildings to protest against the infamous pass laws.
We remember and celebrate the achievements of these women, whom we might call the Daughters Of Thunder (to use the description of Bettye Collier-Thomas, of a group of African-American women preachers, who were not afraid to speak up, who acted against any attempt to keep them quiet).
In the forefront of the march was a phalanx of brave women – Rahima Moosa, Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi and Sophie de Bruyn – armed with nothing more than their incredible bravery, leading the masses behind them.
We should not underestimate the level of women’s tenacity and courage, especially in their time and place. Theirs was an act of great and incalculable bravery.
The year 1956 was just eight years after the dreaded National Party came into power. Life was not going to be the same for ordinary South Africans for a good few decades after 1948.
Cry, The Beloved Country – the title of Alan Paton’s novel, published in the same year – aptly described the tenor of the times.
The 1950s was one of the most turbulent decades in South African history. The apartheid regime was tightening its grip. The 1950s started with pernicious laws being passed, laws that made life for the oppressed groups intolerable. This battery of repressive and discriminatory laws was passed under the watch of a rather severe prime minister at that time, JG Strijdom. The Union Buildings in Pretoria symbolised the citadel of the apartheid regime.
So, in this decade of the 1950s, there was the Suppression of Communism Act (anyone speaking against the government and for justice in those days was labelled a ‘commie’. And it was a label that you could not shake off easily, and many paid dearly for this). There was the Group Areas Act and the infamous Bantu Education Act, and The Immorality Act. The Extension of Universities Act (the apartheid regime had a penchant for euphemistic labels), by the end of the 1950s, ushered in the racially segregated “tribal colleges” or “bush colleges”, and would affect me personally, dictating where I would pursue my university education.
But what we should also remember of these turbulent times is the resistance that was mounted. The way people stood up and were counted against the injustices of the times was absolutely remarkable.
Indeed, these were the fearful and fearless 50s … The Defiance Campaigns, the Freedom Charter, the women’s marches all took place in the 1950s. The ’50s was also the decade when the Black Sash was formed, which also contributed greatly to collective resistance.
We must remember that there were two main women’s events in this period. In 1955, 2 000 women marched on to Pretoria, carrying protest letters with signatures to the minister. And following on the success of this, the number increased to a staggering 20 000 in 1956.
The Pass Laws, which they were protesting against, were the most degrading and undignified. It treated human beings as if they were property, chattel. But the women’s action showed them asserting their dignity, identity and humanity.
Liberation comrades of the past knew how to organise and strategise. There were no emails, and cellphones or access to Facebook and Twitter.
The women were forced to do much leg work, as they went in small groups across the country, to get the message across. They had to deal with bus boycotts, and other hindrances.
Political gatherings were illegal at the time, so the women devised a clever strategy to overcome this. They asked each woman to come with a signed petition. So – technically, legally – these were individual women planning to hand over their petitions to the prime minister. They just happened to be all doing it at the same time!
Yes, we should never underestimate what they achieved, in mobilising 20 000 women from the four corners of the country – with limited means and against excessive state scrutiny – to descend on the Union Buildings on August 9, 1956.
Yes, Women’s Day is about celebrating these and other strong, heroic and courageous women in South African history over the past 100 years.
The Women’s March to Pretoria was one of those absolutely defining moments in the history of resistance in South Africa – a moment that showed the most amazing solidarity and spontaneity ever imaginable.
Women – from different walks of life, different religions (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, to name a few), classes, race groups, political formations and groupings, from across the length and breath of the country – were all united in a common sisterhood against apartheid.
Up to that moment, and even after that, there were separate resistance formations, largely based on difference of race. While there were common aspirations and common goals – of bringing the apartheid regime to its knees – these organisations were separate institutional structures.
The march highlights the idealism and heroism, the lofty values that undergirded the freedom struggle in South Africa. It tells of a time when life was lived in the future, in the hope that change will come. It tells of a time when the impossible was imagined and suffered for… What a lesson for the present time in our beloved land, and in the world, with their many new challenges.
Yes, a time of memory is a time of remembering. It is also a time of re-membering – to piece together, or stitch together again (as Toni Morrison suggests in her novel, Beloved) – fragments from a broken past, into a new mosaic of our shared humanity.
The day Seth, visited me happened to be June 16th – Soweto Day. I also told him all that occurred on that very day, 42 years ago, and showed him the photograph of Hector Pieterson. He seemed pensive, trying to make sense of it all.
I know that my grandson will be reflecting for many years to come, the stories he is learning about the land of his birth. The fact that he was born on July 18, and shares a birthday with Mandela, gives him great joy, but also expands the curiosity he feels about the strange but valiant past he has inherited.