SOUTH AFRICA COMMEMORATE NATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Happy National Women’s day!

Today commemorates the 1956 march of approximately 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to petition against the country's pass laws that required South Africans defined as "black" under The Population Registration Act to carry an internal passport, known as a pass, that served to maintain population segregation, control urbanisation, and manage migrant labour during the apartheid era. The first National Women's Day was celebrated on 9 August 1994. In 2006, a re-enactment of the march was staged for its 50th anniversary, with many of the 1956 march veterans. At the protest in 1956, the women stood silently for 30 minutes and then started singing a protest song that was composed in honour of the occasion: Wathint'Abafazi Wathint'imbokodo!(Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock.). In the 54 years since, the phrase (or its latest incarnation: "you strike a woman, you strike a rock") has come to represent women's courage and strength in South Africa.