WOMEN’S DAY SERIES – Freedom to move curbed by gender violence 50 years later


Date: January 1, 1970
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This 9 August we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Women?s March, an event that we commemorate each year with Women?s Day. Much has changed in terms of women?s organisation since then. Today we have new technologies that can help speed communication and create networks among women. We have better access to legislation, and services ? and many more of us know our rights. Yet organising has also become more complex, with many different issues competing for women?s attention. At the same time, although there is not legislation restricting where women go, we still have a society and system that means that women are very often restricted in their movements. Gender-based violence means that many women are afraid to walk alone on a street at night, caught in cycles of abuse and poverty, and unable to access the very basic rights that the women marchers fought for.

This 9 August we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Women’s March, an event that we commemorate each year with Women’s Day. Much has changed in terms of women’s organisation since then. Today we have new technologies that can help speed communication and create networks among women.  We have better access to legislation, and services – and many more of us know our rights.
 
Yet organising has also become more complex, with many different issues competing for women’s attention. At the same time, although there is not legislation restricting where women go, we still have a society and system that means that women are very often restricted in their movements.
 
Gender-based violence means that many women are afraid to walk alone on a street at night, caught in cycles of abuse and poverty, and unable to access the very basic rights that the women marchers fought for.
 
The 1956 Women’s March in protest against pass laws marked a major success in women’s organisation against a common enemy.  These women stood up for the right to live in cities with their families, without having their freedom of movement limited, consigned to poverty and unemployment.  This is why we celebrate women’s day, in honour of these women who opposed oppression to ensure their daughter’s and families’ freedom.
 
The pass system split families apart.  The enemy of the time was clear – a system that circumscribed movements, ensuring women’s separation from their families.  Likewise, the course of action was obvious, a combination of civil disobedience, petitioning and marching to government offices.  These women knew that they could not rely on anyone else to fight their battle for them. 
 
Imagine if today’s technologies were available to the women at this time! A website could highlight the plight of South African women, making this information available to the whole world.  Women participating in Marches would have international support, and perhaps women around the world could hold parallel marches to help present a united front against this very public enemy. 
 
The plight of these women may attract the support of a celebrity who would give further eminence to the difficulties that the women face.  Instant text messages would summon the call to appear at a certain time and place. 
 
Even without all these technologies, this women’s march presented a challenge to the Strijdom government.  But imagine the possibilities!
 
In 2006 we see a very different scene, one that often lacks a unity of purpose. We remember isolated groups of gender activists facing anger and contempt from a crowd outside a courthouse where a rape trial is taking place.  Both sides have women, screaming for justice.  Women who work within with legal system with rape survivors know that if the verdict is not guilty, this will set a trend for rape trials in the country. 
 
Their worst fears are realised.  The verdict is not guilty.  Worse, instead of the judge saying that there was insufficient evidence to convict, in accordance of the law, the judge ‘finds’ that the complainant has lied. 
 
In 2006 the enemy to be fought is more private, more elusive than the very public problems of the pass laws.  Some are willing to blame patriarchy; others view the problem as theirs or their partners.  The problem in 2006 is growing violence against women.
 
South Africa has one of the highest rape statistics in the world. The figure is increasing every year. The National Institute for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation (NICRO), has estimated that only one in twenty rapes are reported to the police. Based on this estimate, one rape occurs every 83 seconds. 
 
The South African Police Force has recently presented an even bleaker picture. They suggest that one rape occurs every 26 seconds.  Rape statistics are only a part of the picture. 
 
Women abuse, like pass laws for certain South African citizens, determines that some people should not have the rights of others.  Gender-based violence makes women scared to walk alone, living in fear sometimes in their own homes as they are at risk of beating or rape.  As such, women do not have right to freedom of movement. The difference is that where the pass law system was a external, clearly wrong enemy, the enemy for women often sleeps in their beds.
 
The high levels of violence against women in South Africa share the same historical roots as race-based pass system.  Families were broken apart through the migratory labour systems and healthy family relationships disrupted.
 
So how are we, in our current age of technological advancement organising against this common enemy?  In a word: poorly. 
 
In our globalised world, women have a wide variety of causes to adopt.  Women do not recognise the common enemy of gender-based violence, but rather its manifestations. All of which have gender dimensions.  However, the common organisation based on women being in the same boat is lacking.
 
Campaigns such as the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, the newly launched 365 days of activism and the one-in-nine are critical.  However, despite our best efforts, there remain a large portion of women blissfully unaware of campaigns against violence and if they are aware feel that they need not worry.  After all, the enemy is not so readily identifiable.
 
With the technologies to organise in ways never before available, comes the associated flood of information about other causes, local and international.  These have the effect of crowding out our biggest, most difficult challenge. 
 
Yet, this fight, left un-won in this generation will condemn our daughters to a South Africa unsafe for them.  Unable to move, as they want to, without the freedom to make their own life decisions, they will live in fear as we do now.  Like in 1956, no one will fight our battle for us.  We have only ourselves to rely on. 


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