A protest movement formed at a women’s tea party 60 years ago to confront apartheid law remains a key partner today in dealing with the hated system’s lingering effects, writes Michael Morris.
Cape Town - Clapping and cheering, slow at first, swelled to a roar, as the procession of cars, some 150 in all, made its way up Adderley Street.
Men removed their hats, it was reported, and women waved handkerchiefs; from the packed windows and balconies along the way, there was clapping and cheering, and from some buildings “came tickertape recognition”.
The February 13, 1956 headline, “Rousing Cape Town welcome to Sash convoy”, seemed to say it all.
The counterpoint to this news that Monday afternoon was the slightly bigger left-hand headline on the Cape Argus’s front page: “Strydom gives notice of his Bill: 240 cram Assembly”.
After a dogged five-year struggle, the Nationalists had packed Parliament with more members to guarantee passage of the South Africa Act Amendment Bill whose sole function was to revalidate the earlier, twice-defeated Separate Representation of Voters law and strip coloureds from the common voters’ roll. It was that “crammed Assembly” the women of the Black Sash intended to shame, and 700 of them drove to the Cape from across the country to bring home their message.
If they were rewarded with a sense of solidarity in Adderley Street, the same wasn’t universally true elsewhere.
In another report on the same page, readers learned that while the women had been greeted by “V for Victory signs, thumbs-up salutes and warm congratulations” on their trek to the south, these had been offset by occasional taunts of “vuilgoed!” (rubbish), having lighted cigarettes thrown at them, and, in Worcester, being confronted by a man who said menacingly: “We would like to push you into the sea.”
In the same report, a Mrs Pienaar, from Welkom, was quoted as saying with doubtless prescient solemnity: “We are an old Free State family. Our people came up with the Voortrekkers. I feel deeply religious about this; I feel that we are in danger of losing something we may never recover.”
Indeed, it was one more regressive step, and there would be many more, the sum impact of which continues, all these years later, to define a socio-economic landscape blighted by poverty, insufficiency, stark inequality, resentment and, increasingly, disillusionment.
If that is unsurprising, given the scale of the damage inflicted on society by the decades of apartheid, what is striking in 2015 is that the legacy of those women of the 1950s who levelled funereal stares at Nationalist cabinet ministers and stood in mournful black-sashed silence on street corners is an organisation more actively engaged than ever as a leading partner in – as its moniker has it – “making human rights real”.
From the early marches, petitions, overnight vigils and protest meetings, the organisation’s website tells us, the Black Sash expanded its focus to include the moral, legal and socio-economic issues arising from racial discrimination. It established a network of advice offices, offering free paralegal advice and support, staffed mainly by volunteers and supported by men and women from the townships who acted as interpreters.
As the complexity and brutality of apartheid grew, these offices proved a vital resource in dealing with the consequences of apartheid, from housing, unemployment and pensions to influx control and detention without trial.
“Their physical, witnessing presence,” it is noted, “enabled the Black Sash to speak with authority about what its members had experienced – in the courts and at commissions of inquiry; monitoring at sites of forced removals, potential violence or police action. Every comment, every statistic, every statement issued by the Black Sash during these difficult years was underpinned and supported by these daily experiences – in the advice offices, in fieldwork and in personal witness. This strong foundation of first-hand knowledge earned the respect of many who came to rely on this information.”
It also earned many unwelcome attention – arrests, detention, surveillance and harassment – but recognition, too. On his release in 1990, Nelson Mandela singled out the Black Sash as having been, with the National Union of South African Students, the “conscience of white South Africa”.
The far-reaching change of the 1990s was a challenge many activist or non-government organisations failed to survive, for complex reasons, but including how to reorder their activities to match the new socio-political terrain.
Under the new conditions, the Black Sash reformed itself. Moving away from being an organisation that was member-driven, and almost entirely made up of white women volunteers, it had, by the end of 1995, evolved into its structure of a professionally staffed non-government organisation led by a national director, and accountable to a board of trustees.
Its primary focus areas are “social protection, with an emphasis on women and children; rights-based information, education and training; community monitoring, and advocacy in partnership”.
National director Lynette Maart said: “The challenges facing South Africa are inequality and extreme poverty, a footprint left by apartheid and globalisation which will not be changed quickly.
“While we acknowledge that we have a good constitution, it is in part a promise that does not always translate into human rights on the ground, and we need to remain mindful that there is still a lot of work to be done.”
In its current incarnation, she said, the Black Sash worked in partnership with some 400 community-based organisations across the country, monitoring the lived experience of people, helping them – in part through training – to make their voices heard, and advocating programmes or initiatives to deal with on-the-ground problems.
Maart said the constitution was clear that Section 27 – socio-economic – rights required “progressive realisation”, but that it was equally clear that even where the state was making progress, rights were often “diluted” in their implementation.
A prime example was widescale unauthorised or fraudulent deductions from social grants and pensions, which Black Sash has been tackling: this has a key role through the Hands Off Our Grants campaign.
By engaging with the government, joining a ministerial task team and helping devise a system to protect grants and pensions, millions of poor South Africans would benefit practically.
In this, long-time member and trustee Di Oliver told Weekend Argus, the Black Sash’s extensive experience of monitoring and research was indispensable.
“People sometimes ask us why we are still around, and the fact is there are many reasons.”
A lot of energy went into transferring the skills built up over the years – in monitoring and recording South Africa’s lived reality – to partners in communities.
“And that is a big part of the legacy of the Black Sash,” she said.
* The Black Sash celebrates its 60th anniversary at a function in Cape Town on Tuesday, which will also be the launch of Annemarie Hendrikz’s book on the life of Black Sash veteran Sheena Duncan.
In Pietermaritzburg on Saturday, Black Sash supporters attended the launch of Mary Kleinenberg and Christopher Merrett’s book Standing on Street Corners: A history of the Natal Midlands region of the Black Sash.
Next Saturday, the Black Sash in Johannesburg will celebrate the anniversary in conjunction with the South African History Archive at the Women’s Jail Atrium on Constitution Hill.
This event will include a panel discussion between Black Sash leaders, activists and allies, past and present, including Bongi Mkhabela, chair of the Black Sash Trust, Thandiwe Zulu, Judith Hawarden, Ish Mkhabela, Adele Kirsten, Gille de Vlieg and Marj Brown.
Weekend Argus