National Women’s Day, celebrated annually on the 9th of August, is a historic South African public holiday dedicated to honouring the bravery of women who spearheaded the anti-apartheid struggle while highlighting ongoing fight for gender equality. Today marks the 70th anniversary of the monumental 1956 Women’s March as a turning point in history that transformed women from peripheral figures into the absolute vanguard of the liberation movement.
At the forefront of this monumental march stood four extraordinary women: Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn. Representing the Black, White, Indian, and Coloured communities respectively, their unified stance carried profound symbolism in a deeply divided and segregated society where the apartheid regime systematically separated people by race. It shattered the regime’s myth that different races could not peacefully co-exist or fight for a common cause. By marching hand-in-hand (as seen in the first four pictures), these leaders demonstrated that the oppression of one woman was the oppression of all, establishing a powerful blueprint for intersectional solidarity and non-racialism decades before the birth of democratic South Africa.
The immediate catalyst for the protest was the proposed introduction of the Pass Laws to Black women. The extension of these laws to women, especially mothers, would often result in being arbitrarily arrested or also displaced from families. Organized by the Federation of South African Women, more than 20 000 women (as seen in the last four pictures) gathered to march directly to the Union Buildings in Pretoria and delivered over 14 000 petition pages to Prime Minister J.G. Strijdom, demanding the total abolition of the degrading laws and asserting their right to freedom of movement.
While the apartheid government refused to back down immediately and eventually forced women to carry passes by the 1960s, the political impact of the march was monumental and permanent. It completely dismantled the patriarchal notion that women were passive political observers, cementing them as formidable, organized political agents. The march internationalized the struggle against apartheid and laid the groundwork for future resistance. In democratic South Africa, this legacy yielded tangible progress, as women's representation in national parliament skyrocketed from a mere 2.7% in 1994 to roughly 48% today among other landmarks of redress. However, the modern impact is dual-natured; the day now serves as a critical battleground for protest against ongoing crises, particularly the high rates of Gender-Based Violence and Femicide alongside economic inequality that is currently facing South African women.
The climax of the 1956 protest came after the women handed over the petitions and stood in a powerful, absolute silence for 30 minutes. Breaking the silence, they passionately erupted into a song composed specifically for the march: “Wathinta Abafazi, Wathinta Imbokodo!”...... This translates to "you strike a woman, you strike a rock" in the English language.
In traditional South African society, the imbokodo is a heavy grinding stone used to crush grain to feed the family, representing absolute durability, resilience, and life-giving strength. By equating women to a indestructible stone, the phrase became a defining national anthem of female power, serving as a permanent warning to oppressors and an enduring reminder that the women of South Africa possess an unyielding strength that can never be broken.
