The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) will dedicate the month of August – Women’s Month – to the acknowledgement and foregrounding of the resilience of South African women. This will be done through various interventions and activities across our faculties and campuses based in Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
9 August 1956 marks a historic date in South Africa. On that day, some 20 000 women assembled at one of renowned architect Herbert Baker’s most famous South African monuments - the Union Buildings, Pretoria. This historic march was triggered by the announcement of Hendrik Verwoerd – the then Minister of Native Affairs – that Black women were, from 1957, required to carry passbooks, also known as dom-passes.
Despite the Apartheid government’s desperate attempts to impede the 9 August 1956 women’s march, the women kept pouring onto Pretoria’s Meintjieskop Koppie, carrying placards that read: “With passes, we are slaves”, “Passes mean destitute children”. They came from every nook and cranny of the country. Dressed in their church uniforms, work regalia and traditional attire, the women constituted a colourful and disciplined crowd, even as their militant slogans – “Strijdom wathint’abafazi, wathint’imbikodo” and “Malibongwe igama lamakhosikazi” – echoed across the Union Buildings amphitheatre.
Lilian Masediba Ngoyi – a Shop Steward of the Garment Workers’ Union and President of the Transvaal Women’s League – was the most prominent leader of the march.
Prof Tinyiko Maluleke, Vice-Chancellor and Principal.
But she was not alone; there was a host of other women leaders, such as Rahima Moosa, Helen Joseph, Sophie de Bruyn, Maggie Resha and Dora Tamana, amongst others.
In an article on Lilian Ngoyi, published by Drum Magazine in March 1956, Es’kia Mphahlele described Ngoyi as a woman of “granite reinforced with wire”, as well as an excellent speaker who could “toss an audience around her little finger”. Unfortunately, the text and the recording of Lilian Ngoyi’s 9 August 1956 speech have been lost. But we know that it was a stirring speech. On that day, Ngoyi’s legendary control over her audiences, of which Mphahlele wrote, was in evidence, when, after delivering the petition, Ngoyi instructed the women to be silent. And the women held their silence for half an hour.
TUT salutes the women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956. More importantly, we applaud the resilience of all the women who have made and continue to make great contributions to the higher education sector. As a university of technology, which has zero tolerance for gender-based violence, we are determined to play our part in training women leaders and displaying their contributions to innovation and knowledge creation.