3 days ago
The Unfinished Business of Women's Struggle for Freedom, Justice
Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the African National Congress (ANC) protest against gender based violence, high unemployment and the gender pay gap at a rally held in the Mary Fitzgerald Square, Johannesburg on October 7, 2021.
Zamikhaya Maseti
On 9 August 1956, the Women of South Africa rose with a clarity of purpose that still reverberates through the sinews of the Republic. More than 20,000 of them converged upon the seat of State power, the Union Buildings, in a Moment of Defiance that defied geography, race, and class. They were not mere protestors; they were political architects, moral insurgents, and custodians of a vision far ahead of its time.
At the forefront of that march stood the unyielding spirits of Lilian Ngoyi, Charlotte Maxeke, and Sophie de Bruyn, matriarchs of the resistance whose names must never be invoked lightly. They mobilised not for inclusion into an oppressive order, but to dismantle it altogether. They marched for universal suffrage, for dignity, for spatial and economic justice, and for a democratic future where womanhood would no longer be a category of burden.
As they advanced toward Pretoria, they did so in song, belting out the anthem that remains etched in the bloodstream of every freedom-loving South African: 'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo'-'You strike a woman, you strike a rock'.
This was not a metaphor. It was a manifesto. It was a declaration of war on patriarchy, on pass laws, and on every system that imagined women as marginal to history.
Sixty-nine years later, the nation stands on the cusp of a National Dialogue, an intergenerational reckoning with itself, with its promises, and with the idea of justice that animated 1994. In this moment of political recalibration, it is only right that we pause to ask, with clarity and without sentimentality: how far have we come in actualising the feminist imagination of 1956, and how much further must we go to vindicate it?
To be sure, there are victories to honour. The South African state has, since the advent of democracy, erected one of the most progressive legislative frameworks for gender equity on the continent. Women now constitute approximately 45 per cent of the National Assembly, a figure that places us within the top 20 globally. The leadership of Parliament itself is now held by women, Speaker Thoko Didiza and Deputy Speaker Annelie Lotriet, a symbolic and substantive milestone.
In the Public Service, women now hold just over 43 per cent of senior management positions, and a similar share in middle management. The presence of women in the machinery of the State is no longer incidental. It is structured. It is measurable. It is the result of hard-fought policy instruments, the Employment Equity Act, the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service, the Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill, and the mainstreaming principles embedded in the National Gender Policy Framework. At the Deputy Ministerial level, 17 out of 44 posts are held by Women, a reflection of the State's modest but visible attempt to build a leadership cadre that reflects the nation's demographics and aspirations.
Yet, despite these institutional gains, the fault lines remain glaring. The Cabinet of 2024, unlike that of 2019, reflects regression, not progress. With women now occupying a mere 23 per cent of ministerial positions, the state has retreated from the principle of gender parity. This is not an oversight. It is a political decision and must be named as such. The picture becomes even more precarious when we look at the Private Sector, the bastion of untransformed power. Women constitute less than 30 per cent of Top Management roles.
Their representation on JSE-listed Boards remains trapped below 28 per cent, and female CEOs are so few they can be counted by name rather than by number. The myth of meritocracy has become a smokescreen behind which gender exclusion continues to be rationalised, laundered, and perpetuated.
Reports from the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) reveal a corporate landscape that continues to sidestep real transformation. Women, especially Black Women, remain absent from executive pipelines. Those who enter are rarely retained, mentored, or promoted. Gender pay disparities are not just an economic injustice; they are a structural message; some labour is simply undervalued because it is feminised.
It is tempting, especially during commemorative months, to romanticise the past. But the Women of 1956 were not dreamers. They were disruptors. Their legacy cannot be reduced to songs and slogans. They did not march so that we could conflate presence with power. They marched so that Women could remake power itself.
Lilian Ngoyi would not be placated by the statistics. Charlotte Maxeke would not accept symbolic appointments as a substitute for structural equity. Sophie de Bruyn, the last living marcher of that delegation, continues to remind us that the revolution is only half done. They would ask us to look beyond Parliamentary quotas and into budget allocations. They would demand gender-responsive procurement, leadership development pipelines, childcare support systems, and the decolonisation of workplace cultures. They would challenge the State's failure to stem the tide of gender-based violence and would interrogate the private sector's excuses for executive homogeneity.
They would ask the only question that matters: are Women safer, freer, and more powerful today than they were when we marched? The forthcoming National Dialogue must not degenerate into a talk shop. It must not be staged as a theatre of consensus. It must become what the Women of 1956 modelled: a confrontation with systemic failure.
Gender mainstreaming must not be an add-on, a side-panel, or a ceremonial gesture. It must inform how the State allocates resources, how it designs economic recovery, how it responds to climate change, how it governs technology, and how it measures its legitimacy. This is not about inclusion. It is about power. And until Women hold actual institutional power, the project remains unfinished.
The Women of 1956 did not ask for invitations. They claimed their space. They did not request equity; they declared it. Their voices live on, not in textbooks, but in every act of refusal, every policy reform, every street protest, and every boardroom intervention that challenges the status quo.
Let us rise with their defiance, walk in their footsteps, and write the next chapter of the South African Women's struggle with precision, anger, vision, and strategy. Let us reclaim the moral clarity of 'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo', not as a cultural cliché, but as a political imperative.
* Zamikhaya Maseti is a Political Economy Analyst.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
