MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Significance of Women’s Day must not be watered down

A week ago, SA commemorated Women’s Day – one of the most significant days in the country’s calendar. However, instead of it being a day on which a historic event was commemorated, and a day for reflection on the road that women have travelled in our quest for emancipation, the day was largely reduced to an ahistoric and apolitical event for “all the beautiful women of SA” in the same vein and tone of Mother’s Day or a day for celebrating wives and girlfriends.

While this trend is observable on other important and historic days such as Heritage Day, which has been reduced to a national braai day, the significance of Women’s Day is too important for me as a woman and a feminist to shrug off its distortion as something of no importance.

Women’s Day is a commemoration of the women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest against draconian apartheid legislation that sought to control black women in urban areas, and subject them to cruel forms of surveillance. The march, organised by the Federation of SA Women (FSAW), is significant for many reasons, one of which is that it challenged the notion that women belonged solely in the reproductive space, that “a woman’s place is in the kitchen”.

Long before this march, and as far back as 1913 when officials in the Orange Free State first declared that women living in townships would be required to buy new entry permits each month, women had always challenged the system. On this particular occasion, in 1913, the women sent deputations to the government, collected thousands of signatures on petitions, and organised demonstrations to protest the permit requirement.

This led to unrest throughout the Orange Free State, with hundreds of women being sent to prison. Civil disobedience and demonstrations continued sporadically for several years and as a result, the permit requirement was withdrawn. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the subject of permits for black women was re-introduced.

The 20,000 strong women who marched to the Union Buildings, by daring to confront JG Strydom, the then prime minister, set parameters for the radicalisation of women, and cemented women’s place in the fight for freedom. They had managed to organise effectively. This particular march, unlike those that had been staged before it, including in the previous year, could not be ignored, even as Strydom and his senior officials had intentionally not availed themselves to receive the memorandum. This march shook the regime, and it changed our country forever.

When we trivialise a day like this, reducing it to a celebration of mothers, wives and girlfriends, rather than a commemoration of the brave women who marched on that wintry day 67 years ago, we deny ourselves reflection on what the day meant in 1956 and what it means today. And what the day means to me today as a young black woman born in a democratic dispensation, is that almost seven decades ago, 20 000 women fought for the right to free movement and yet, in 2023, the women of our country are fighting for the right to move freely without being raped and killed. According to the SA Police Service, in the first three months of 2023, at least 10,512 women were raped, 1,485 attempted murders of women were reported and 969 women were killed. In most of these cases, the perpetrator is known to the women.

Furthermore, many of the crimes occurred in the residence of the victim. When I reflect on the women who marched in 1956, it occurs to me that free movement for us is not about the right to walk freely in urban areas without dompasses. It is about the right to move from the kitchen to the bedroom in our own homes without being violated.

As South Africans, we must be careful about what narratives and stories we allow to find expression and be cemented in our collective memory. We must not let significant and historic days be watered down and depoliticised. It is in these narratives and stories that history is rewritten and distorted.