South Afrika: Women repeat anti-apartheid march

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/southafric...840786,00.html

Women repeat anti-apartheid march

David Beresford and Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Thursday August 10, 2006
The Guardian


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 their
anthem: "You have touched the women, Strijdom. You
have struck a rock."

Yesterday, thousands of South African women who marked
the 50th anniversary of that historic anti-apartheid
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 JG Strijdom - arguably the most
vicious of apartheid's rulers - was in power.
Yesterday it was Thabo Mbeki who received the
marchers, telling 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 even though apartheid is
history, South African women had to continue their
struggle against poverty, Aids and the world's highest
rates of rape, domestic violence and murder against
females.

Sophie Williams de Bruyn, 68, one of the organisers of
the 1956 march, spoke about the threats women face.
"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."