African Women`s Resistance to the Pass Laws in South Africa 1950-1960 Now, they have touched the women. They have struck a rock. They have dislodged a boulder. They will be crushed.... .....The women concluded their demonstration by singing freedom songs, including a new one composed especially for the occasion: Wathint` abafazi, Strijdom! Wathint` imbokodo uzo kufa! Now you have touched the women, Strijdom! You have struck a rock (You have dislodged a boulder!) You will be crushed! African women fought the pass laws as they had fought no other issue. Passes were the symbol of their deepest oppression. It was through the pass laws that the influx control system was enforced. It was influx control that turned their husbands into migrant workers and made them into widows in the reserves. Passes deprived them of the basic right to live with their husbands and to raise their children in a stable family unit. Throughout the 1950s, an average of 339,255 African men were convicted each year for pass laws violations. If passes were extended to African women, that figure would more than double. If mothers were arrested as well as fathers, the women asked, who would care for the children? The call-to-action flyers of the Women`s League and the Federation described in vivid detail the plight of the African people under the pass laws. A flyer printed in 1957 carried the following challenge: Who knows better than any African woman what it means to have a husband who must carry a pass? The flyer continued: Passes mean prison; passes mean broken homes; passes mean suffering and misery for every African family in our country; passes are just another way in which the Government makes slaves of the Africans; passes mean hunger and unemployment; passed are an insult... The extension of passes to women constituted an attack on ourselves, our mothers, sisters, children and families, the flyer concluded, an attack that would be fought with all the women`s strength. (13).... sahistory.org.za/article/now-you-have-touched-women
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 18:21:36 +0000
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