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Women re-enact march against apartheid

David Beresford and Andrew Meldrum

IT WAS a seminal moment in the history of apartheid, a day on which 20,000 women risked arrest or worse by marching on Pretoria's Union Buildings, singing : "You have touched the women, Strijdom. You have struck a rock."

On Wednesday, thousands of South African women who marked the 50th anniversary of that historic march by re-enacting it received a far warmer reception at South Africa's administrative headquarters than that given in 1956.

The original march was staged to protest against pass laws, which separated families and restricted the movement of black people.

Then, the Union Buildings were the citadel of Afrikaner rule, and J.G. Strijdom — arguably the most vicious of apartheid's rulers — was in power. On Monday, Thabo Mbeki, who received the marchers, told them: "Together as a nation we must uphold the perspective that none of us is free unless the women of our country are free. Free from racial and gender discrimination, free from poverty, free from fear and violence."

The President has increased the participation of women in his government — his Deputy President is a woman, as are 12 of his 28 Ministers. But Mr. Mbeki and other speakers emphasised that South African women had to continue their struggle against poverty, AIDS and the world's highest rates of rape, domestic violence, and murder.

Sophie Williams de Bruyn, 68, one of the organisers of the 1956 march, said: "This is not what we struggled for — raping of babies, rampant poverty, trafficking of children and so many ugly things. What we must do is keep pushing."

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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