They defied society’s expectations

The marginalised are still struggling to be heard in the public space

IN 1956 A GROUP of women defied the expectations society had of them. They decided not to stay at home, not to heed the restrictions placed on them by men, white men in particular.

Beyond challenging the expectations of femininity, they also challenged the expectations of race – black women and white women marched together, black women leading the charge in many respects. This action turned the colonial and apartheid hierarchy on its head – white men were supposed to be at the top of the hierarchy, running society, making decisions that influenced every other member of society.

White women were next in line, although, as many white women will tell you today, there was a massive gap between the first and the second rungs.

White women’s reproductive potential regulated their lives; married women were rarely appointed to a job permanently – the expectation was that they would have children somewhere along the line and stay at home to raise them.

Practically this meant that professional women struggled to advance their careers, and many women are still fighting to close the pay gap that was created by this system. Still, white women had it good – at least materially. They lived in houses built with bricks and mortar, with more than enough room for their whole family. Most had food on the table for their children, with special treats on Sundays.

Black men came next, and we can probably all agree that the country’s economy, then and now, was built on the backs of black men. It came at a cost though.

Black men had to leave their families to access jobs that were mostly menial and often dangerous. Black men also became the faces of the struggle against apartheid – Biko, Mandela, Tambo… all men. Supported by their women, but they played the leading roles. When we invoke those surnames we think Steve, Nelson, Oliver, not Ntsiki, Winnie, Adelaide.

The struggle was a gendered one. Black women’s role in the apartheid system was to raise the white leaders of tomorrow; in the struggle against apartheid, they were supposed to raise soldiers, freedom fighters, the men who would overthrow the system of white supremacy.

But on August 9, 1956, that hierarchy was inverted. Women took a stand, they marched on the Union Buildings to say: “Enough! We will not be regulated!”

Of course, the white man, in the form of the prime minister at the time, JG Strijdom, would not listen to them.

He probably thought they were women speaking out of turn, in need of the guidance of the men in their lives. But they persevered, these women, standing in silence for 30 minutes, then singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, upending not only the expectations regarding gender and race, but also expectations of protest and the search for justice. They changed the script, opening possibilities for change and engagement that weren’t there before.

Stories of the time also tell of black women bringing their white employers’ children along, perhaps saying something of the tenacity of a messed-up system, but perhaps also saying something about an ethic of care, a moral compass that can only be held by the most marginalised members of a system, and an ability to make visible a simultaneous vulnerability and strength, saying: “I will take care of the vulnerable, but I will do it on my terms, I will not allow my own vulnerability to be exploited.”

And it is here that I find encouragement and value in the celebration of Women’s Day.

There is something about the position of marginalisation that enables marginalised people, women

They changed the script, opening possibilities for change

in general and black women specifically, to make normative injustice visible. The 1956 Women’s March is a particularly salient example of this, but we see it every time marginalised people take a stand – when gay women demand justice for so-called “corrective” rape; when trans folks demand degendered bathrooms; when disabled people demand access to daily life; when black people insist that #blacklivesmatter; when teenage girls demand an end to rape culture; when impoverished, talented students call for the heads of colonial dinosaurs – these moments, born out of vulnerability and marginality, are immensely powerful.

They change the script, they bring us face to face with the glitches in our system, they upend the way we do things

Of course these moments are not the panacea to our ongoing political challenges – the fact that black women are still at the bottom of the hierarchy 60 years after the Women’s March says a lot. But there is strength to be found in these moments, where the vulnerable and marginalised say: “I will do this on my terms.”

Kotze is a psychologist at Lawyers Against Abuse, a nonprofit organisation in Diepsloot that assists victims of genderbased violence.