I Am A Phenomenal Woman: Celebrating Women's Month

Photo courtesy of Unsplash and South African History Online.

How to describe her? To call her plain would be painfully inaccurate. She is devastatingly beautiful, with a natural glow that radiates from her; and her smile…a breath-taking site that lights up and fills the darkest dwellings. Truly a cosmic being, an embodied divine feminine goddess, praise be to the phenomenal woman! The cultivator of life, the teacher, the advisor, the caregiver, and the warrior by blood. This month we raise our glasses to all women and their daily triumphs.

In South Africa, the 9th day of August is recognised as women’s day where we commemorate the strength, resilience and livelihoods of women who have restlessly paved the way for the upcoming generations and their contribution to society, the country, and the world at large.

Women’s day forms part of South Africa’s Women’s Month which presents the opportunity to acknowledge the struggles and achievements of the many women who fought to make their voices heard, laying the foundations of empowerment and gender equality, as in the words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we must make it our culture”.

The first National Women’s Day in South Africa was celebrated on the 9th of August 1995. This year marks 65 years since the women’s march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. We pay homage to the women who marched to these buildings on August 9th, 1956, in protest of the extension of Pass Laws to women.

The History of women's month in South Africa

The 1956 Women’s anti-pass march in Pretoria.

Paging back in history, the apartheid government’s first attempt to impose passes and permits on women fell short. In 1913, Orange Free State government officials asserted that women residing in urban townships would be compelled to purchase entry permits monthly. In retaliation, women sent delegates to the government, gathered signatures on petitions and staged enormous rallies to protest the proposed permit requirement. Civil unrest and rallies persisted intermittently for several years. Eventually, further attempts to enforce the permit requirement for African women ceased, which was up until the 1950s.

The laws requiring permits were sanctioned around 1952, and the issuing of these documents commenced in the Western Cape, which the government referred to as a “coloured preference area”. With the restrictions set up by the government, no African worker could be employed unless the Department of Labour concluded that there were no Coloured workers available. Foreigners were to be removed from the area, no new families would be granted entry, women and children had limited entry and those who did not meet the criteria were sent back. Ultimately, the admission of migrant labourers was restricted.

Subsequently, the government at the time required measures of detecting women who had no legal right to remain in the Western Cape. According to the terms of the Native Laws Amendment Act: women recognised outside racial restrictions were not required to carry permits, only women who fall under work-seeker or women with special permissions to remain in the area were required to have a permit. Any woman who could not prove her status through a permit was liable to arrest.

The Women’s march of 1956.

Reaction to the newly implemented system was fierce and many black citizens were preparing for the inescapable outcome. In January 1953, African men and women rallied in the Langa township outside Cape Town in retaliation to the implementation of the Native Laws Amendment Act. Founder of the Federation of South African Women, and member of the ANC Women’s League, Dora Tamana, emerged from the crowd and proclaimed a passionate speech:

“We women, will never carry these passes. This is something that touches my heart. I appeal to you young Africans to come forward and fight. These passes make the road even narrower for us. We have seen unemployment, lack of accommodation and families broken because of passes. We have seen it with our men. Who will look after our children when we go to jail for a small technical offence, not having a pass”.

Being one of the largest demonstrations staged in South Africa’s history, 20 000 multicultural women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on the 9th of August 1956, to petition against the possession of passes by women to JG Strijdom, who was prime minister at the time. A song broke out from the crowd, a cry from thousands of women who have suffered and endured much in their lifetime,

“Wathit’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo Strijdom!” which when roughly translated is, “Now you have touched a woman, you have struck a rock Strijdom!”.

This phrase has manifested to represent the courage and strength of South African women.

As we close on this iconic historical event, today's National Women’s Day in South Africa is commemorated by emphasising many of the distinct issues that women in South Africa and across the world still face. Issues such as discrimination, gender-based violence, sanitary poverty, unequal pay, harassment at the workplace, and fair access to education.

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xoxo Happy Women's Month!

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