Today’s mass action under the banner #TheTotalShutdown: Intersectional Women’s March Against gender-based violence deserves support from everyone.
The action to “shut down the country” is to mark the start of Women’s Month. Women have been urged to stay away from work. It’s a tough call for those who are still worst off in our country, the triple oppressed by virtue of being black, poor and women.
At the Cape Times the women, by far the majority at all levels, have resolved that while they will respect the long-standing practice that journalists are essential workers required to work to bring the stories of the day to the world, they will also join the stayaway from work in the morning and march for some of the way. Later they will return to the office to tell their stories, presented elsewhere in the paper.
Men have been asked not to join the march and to instead show their support by donating money, or standing in for women in the workplace.
Today’s events are at a time when gender-based violence has reached all-time highs. They also come eight days before Women’s Day when, 62 years ago, the women marched to the Union Buildings to protest against apartheid.
The leadership and the crowd were a powerful example of non-racialism in practice. They came from all parts of the country, some sleeping in chilly township halls and stations once they eventually reached Pretoria, others hiring buses or walking from rural areas.
August 9, 1956 is indeed an iconic day that remains revered six decades later.
Today’s women are fighting a different struggle - gender-based violence. Dozens of women are dying at the hands of their menfolk, many of them their intimate partners.
One of the 24 demands that will be presented at the Union Buildings is that “the state must do everything within its powers to allow women to realise our right to be free from violence, whether it emanates from the public or private sources”.
The heroines of ’56 would be alarmed at the challenges - and dangers - that today’s generation of women face.