“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”― Mahatma Gandhi
It’s 12 : 09 PM on day 1081 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to pray, brush my teeth, feed myself Bran Flakes and a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, practice sitting up straight to strengthen my core muscles, stretch my hamstrings, read 1 Samuel 15, publish my Disability of the Day feature, tweet and Facebook about my campaign -nobody donated so far today either.
As you may or may not know August is Women’s Month here in South Africa and in honour of that I have compiled short biography of five women who marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the proposed amendments to the Urban Areas Act (commonly known as the pass laws) of 1950. Take a look:
5 Extraordinary Women of 1956
Lillian Masediba Ngoyi
Lilian Ngoyi (image courtesy of Wikipedia)
Lillian Masediba Ngoyi “Ma Ngoyi”, (25 September 1911 – 13 March 1980), was a South African anti-apartheid activist.[1][2][3][4] She was the first woman elected to the executive committee of the African National Congress, and helped launch the Federation of South African Women.
Ngoyi joined the ANC Women’s League in 1952; she was at that stage a widow with two children and an elderly mother to support, and worked as a seamstress. A year later she was elected as President of the Women’s League. On 9 August 1956, Ngoyi led a march along with Helen Joseph,Rahima Moosa, Sophia Williams-De Bruyn, Bertha Gxowa and Albertina Sisulu of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings of Pretoria in protest against the apartheid government requiring women to carry passbooks as part of the pass laws.
Lilian Ngoyi was also a transnational figure who recognised the potential influence that international support could have on the struggle against apartheid and the emancipation of black women. With this in mind she embarked on an audacious (and highly illegal) journey to Lausanne, Switzerland in 1955 to participate in the World Congress of Mothers held by the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF). Accompanied by her fellow activist Dora Tamana, and as an official delegate of FEDSAW, she embarked on a journey that would see an attempt to stow away on a boat leaving Cape Town under “white names”, defy (with the help of a sympathetic pilot) segregated seating on a plane bound for London and gain entry to Britain under the pretext of completing her course in bible studies. With Tamana, she would visit England, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, China and Russia, meeting women leaders often engaged in left wing politics, before arriving back in South Africa a wanted woman.[5]
Ngoyi was not an intellectual, rather she was known as a strong orator and a fiery inspiration to many of her colleagues in the ANC. She was arrested in 1956, spent 71 days in solitary confinement, and was for a period of 11 years placed under severe bans and restrictions that often confined to her home in Orlando, Soweto. A community health centre in Soweto is named in her honour.
On 16 November 2004, the South African Ministry of the Environment launched the first vessel in a class of environmental patrol vessel named theLillian Ngoyi in her honor.[2][3]
On 9 August 2006, the 50th anniversary of the march on Pretoria, Strijdom Square from which the women marched, was renamed Lilian Ngoyi Square.[6] 9 August is commemorated in South Africa as Women’s Day.
Helen Joseph
Helen Joseph 1941 (image courtesy of Wikipedia)
Helen Beatrice Joseph (née Fennell) (8 April 1905 – 25 December 1992) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. [1]
Helen Joseph was born in Easebourne near Midhurst West Sussex, England and graduated from King’s College London, in 1927. After working as a teacher in India for three years, Helen came to South Africa in 1931, where she met and married a dentist, Billie Joseph. She served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during World War II as an information and welfare officer. After the war and her divorce she trained as a social worker and started working in a community centre in a Coloured (mixed race) area of Cape Town.[2]
In 1951 Helen took a job with the Garment Workers Union, led by Solly Sachs. She was a founder member of the Congress of Democrats, and one of the leaders who read out clauses of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955. Appalled by the plight of black women, she was pivotal in the formation of the Federation of South African Women and with the organisation’s leadership, spearheaded a march of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against pass laws on August 9, 1956. This day is still celebrated as South Africa’s Women’s Day.[2]
She was a defendant at the 1956 Treason Trial. She was arrested on a charge of high treason in December 1956, then banned in 1957. The treason trial dragged on for four years but she was acquitted in 1961. In spite of her acquittal, in 13 October 1962, Helen became the first person to be placed under house arrest under theSabotage Act that had just been introduced by the apartheid government. She narrowly escaped death more than once, surviving bullets shot through her bedroom and a bomb wired to her front gate. Her last banning order was lifted when she was 80 years old.[2]
Helen had no children of her own, but frequently stood in loco parentis for the children of comrades in prison or in exile. Among the children who spent time in her care were Winnie and Nelson Mandela‘s daughters Zinzi and Zenani and Bram Fischer‘s daughter Ilsa.
Helen Joseph died on the 25 December 1992 at the age of 87.
Rahima Moosa
Rahima Moosa (Image courtesy of http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/rahima-moosa)
Rahima Moosa was one of twins born in Cape Town in 1922. She was brought up in a liberated Islamic environment with a father who admired Gandhi. She dropped out of school with little formal education.[2] Annoyed by the South African segregation laws she and her twin sister Fatima campaigned for change. Rahima was a shop steward and in 1951 she married a fellow activist Dr. Hassen “Ike” Mohamed Moosa who had already stood trial for treason. They move to Johannesburg and lived here and had four children. [3] Both of them were very active in the South African Indian Congress.[2]Together the two of them helped organise the 1955 Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter. The following year Rahima, Sophia Williams-De Bruyn, Helen Joseph and Lillian Ngoyi led 20,000 women on 9 August 1956 to demonstrate against the the further strengthening of the Apartheid Pass Laws.[4] This day is now celebrated annually as National Women’s Day.
Sophia Williams-De Bruyn
Sophia Williams-De Bruyn (Image courtesy of http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sophia-theresa-williams-de-bruyn)
Sophia Williams-De Bruyn (born 1938) is a former South African anti-apartheid activist.
Born in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, Williams-De Bruyn rose from working in the Van Lane Textile factory to become an executive member of the Textile Workers Union in Port Elizabeth. She was a founding member of the South African Congress of Trade Union (SACTU), the predecessor of the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU). In 1955, she was appointed as a full-time organiser of the ‘Coloured People’s Congress’ in Johannesburg.
On August 9, 1956, she led the march of 20 000 women on the Union Buildings of Pretoria along with Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa, Helen Joseph[1] and Albertina Sisulu to protest the requirement that women carry pass books as part of the pass laws. She is the last living leader of the march.
The recipient of numerous awards, she is currently a provincial legislator in Gauteng Province for the ANC.
Albertina Sisulu
Albertina Sisulu (Image courtesy of http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/albertina-nontsikelelo-sisulu)
Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu (21 October 1918 – 2 June 2011[1]) was a South African anti–apartheid activist, and the widow of fellow activist Walter Sisulu (1912–2003). She was affectionately known as Ma Sisulu throughout her lifetime by the South African public. In 2004 she was voted 57th in the SABC3’s Great South Africans. She died on 2 June 2011 in her home in Linden, Johannesburg, South Africa, aged 92.
Sisulu did not display an interest in politics at first, only attending political meetings with Walter in a supporting capacity, but she eventually got involved in politics when she joined the African National Congress (ANC) Women′s League in 1955, and took part in the launch of the Freedom Charter the same year. Sisulu was the only woman present at the birth of the ANC Youth League. Sisulu became a member of the executive of the Federation of South African Women in 1954. On 9 August 1956, Sisulu joined Helen Joseph and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn in a march of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings of Pretoria in protest against the apartheid government’s requirement that women carry passbooks as part of the pass laws. “We said, ‘nothing doing’. We are not going to carry passes.” She spent three weeks in jail before being acquitted on pass charges, with Nelson Mandela as her lawyer. Sisulu opposed Bantu education, running schools from home.
Sisulu was arrested[when?] after her husband skipped bail to go underground in 1963, becoming the first woman to be arrested under the General Laws Amendment Act of 1963 enacted in May. The act gave the police the power to hold suspects in detention for 90 days without charging them. Sisulu was placed in solitary confinement for almost two months until 6 August.[5] She was subsequently in and out of jail for her political activities, but she continued to resist against apartheid, despite being banned for most of the 1960s. She was also a key member of the United Democratic Front in the 1980s.
In 1986 she received the honorary citizenship of Reggio nell′Emilia (Italy), the first world’s town that assigned this important award to Sisulu.
In 1989 she managed to obtain a passport and led a UDF delegation overseas, meeting British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and United States president George HW Bush. In London, she addressed a major anti-apartheid rally to protest against the visit of National Party leader FW de Klerk. In 1994, she was elected to the first democratic Parliament, which she served until retiring four years later. At the first meeting of this parliament, she had the honour of nominating Nelson Mandela as President of the Republic of South Africa. That year she received an award from then-president Mandela.
(Note: The information above is courtesy of Wikipedia)
