The birth of Black Sash
How a group of white South African women carved out a role in opposing the injustices of apartheid
MARY Burton’s first Black Sash protest stand was in Kalk Bay in 1965, after the government had threatened to proclaim the historic fishing village “white” under the Group Areas Act. Poster in hand, she and a group of women stood silently alongside the main road, black sashes draped across their bodies, the target of jeers – and the occasional murmur of encouragement.
She recalls how the background sound of the waves and the cries of fishermen bringing in their catch had underscored the “cruelty and stupidity” of breaking up the lives of those who depended on the sea for their livelihood.
Raised in Argentina, Burton joined the Black Sash barely four years after arriving here in 1961, the year this country left the Commonwealth. She was newlymarried to South African Geoffrey Burton, whom she had had met while studying in London.
She recalls how hard it was for her to process the apartheid system. Although she worked at the Service Dining Rooms’ soup kitchen for indigent people, she realised far more was needed. But it was the magnitude and significance of the Group Areas Act that galvanised her into joining the Black Sash.
“In later years, protest stands and marches were restricted and prohibited, and breaking the rules led to attacks and arrests for many,” she said. “Black Sash women stood in all parts of the country in lone vigil, holding their posters, using the last bit of legal space left to them.
“And even when those single stands were legal, the women were often subjected to abuse and intimidation.”
Generations of women have been the backbone of an organisation Nelson Mandela called “the conscience of white South Africa”.
Writing on the Sash’s 60th anniversary, Daily Maverick journalist Marianne Thamm recounts the organisation’s beginnings in 1955 “over a cup of tea by six middle-class white women outraged by the government’s attempts to remove ‘coloured’ citizens from the voter’s roll”.
These women launched the Sash’s forerunner, the Women’s Defence of the Constitution League. Their key strategies were “silent sisterhood” and “blacksashing” (wearing a black sash) during protest vigils.
This silent protest included “haunting” cabinet ministers; standing at the entrances of places they were expected to appear – railway stations, airports, or official functions.
In Parliament’s public gallery, the women were forced to remove the sashes, but devised ways of replacing them – for instance, by wearing long black gloves – infuriating National Party members when they glanced up. Outside Parliament, others stood with bent heads, holding placards protesting against unjust laws.
The group was also hands-on, grappling with the actualities of racial segregation, influx control, migrant labour, censorship, detention without trial, and the states of emergency.
For Burton, three areas stand out. First, the Sash advice offices worked to meet the daily needs of thousands of people, initially under the pass laws and later under the burden of poverty and deprivation.
Second, the protest and advocacy work helped keep alive the public voice of opposition to injustice. “For decades, this had demonstrated in a tangible way the view of white people who were prepared to stand against apartheid.”
And third, the group was determined to spotlight how poverty and violence affected women’s lives.
During the 1970s there was growing interest in Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement, and many white liberals were concerned about the dangers of nationalism, whether black or white, says Burton.
“Black Sash members worked with Steve Biko and the Black Community Programmes, and saw in the movement the value of developing independence and selfworth in the quest for liberation.”
The publisher’s blurb describes the book as “a story of hard work and dedication, of small victories won little by little against the odds, of personal courage in the face of injustice and repression, of vision, compassion and caring. It is a uniquely South African story”.
Burton’s personal story is closely entwined. “Joining influenced the course of my life.”
For one, it brought her to UCT in 1979 as a mature student at 39.
“One of the most important realisations was that I did not know enough about South African history and political theory.”
She took four majors: political science, comparative African law, social anthropology – and English. “I went back to the Black Sash much better equipped to play my part in it.”
She was its national president between 1986 and 1990. The State of Emergency was in force; the ANC had put out the call to make the townships ungovernable, and there were rolling national school boycotts.
“The Black Sash found itself swept up in the mounting pressure for an end to apartheid, and played its part in protesting, monitoring and recording the drastic response from the authorities,” Burton commented.
“In the increasing violence, the Sash longed for peace, but understood that this meant working for justice. A new generation of members joined the older ones, but numbers remained small.”
In the year after South Africa’s watershed elections, Burton took on a new role: one of 17 commissioners on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, serving on its Human Rights Committee.
It was then that she began thinking about writing a history of the Black Sash; many NGOs were redefining their roles in a changing society.
She had a vast collection of documents and newspapers that she augmented with records from the UCT and Wits archives, and recorded interviews with Black Sash members around the country.
In 2008, thanks to Professor Brenda Cooper, Burton became an honorary research associate in the Centre for African Studies, under Cooper’s directorship and then under Professor Harry Garuba.
But the book is not only a chronicle. Burton saw that the Sash’s metamorphosis over six decades could serve as a model for other NGOs. “I still think it is amazing that the process worked – and that the Black Sash continues its work today.”
Mary Burton was national president of the Black Sash for many years and, later, one of the Truth and Reconciliation commissioners.