We Gather in a Time of Deep Crisis on Women’s Day

8 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League press statement

We Gather in a Time of Deep Crisis on Women’s Day

On Women’s Day we are reminded of the 20 000 women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956. They showed us that Unity is the Power.

We celebrate these women and all the women whose names are not remembered in the official celebrations who struggled in community organisations and trade unions and held families together under a brutal system of oppression.

We will celebrate women like Florence Mkhize, Dorothy Nyembe, Sophie de Bruin, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, Victoria Mxenge, Jabu Ndlovu and many, many others, including our own mothers and grandmothers.

We will also celebrating the women in our own movement who have given their lives in the struggle. In 2013 Nqobile Nzuza who was murdered by the Cato Manor Police. She was only 17yrs old. In 2014 Thuli Ndlovu who was murdered in KwaNdengezi by a hitman paid by two ANC councillors. Nokuthula Mabaso who was murdered by a hitman at the eKhenena Commune in May 2022.

We will be having our Women’s Day event at the Dennis Hurley Centre on 9 and 10 August. The programme will start from 10 and run to 15h00 on both days. Our theme for the event is “Let’s Break the Silence and Support Each Other”.

On 09 August we will be discussing about parenting, gender based violence and femicide. On 10August we will be discussing women in leadership, women and livelihoods and women and land.

Abahlali acknowledges and encourages all women participating in the living politics of fighting for their rights and to fulfil the vision and mission of our movement. Our Women’s League wants to create awareness about issues that affect women on daily basis, e.g. patriarchy, impoverishment, unemployment, parenting challenges, the addiction epidemic that is hurting our children, gender based violence, femicide, evictions, state violence, ANC repression and financial autonomy. Most of all we want to support the work to build women’s power in struggle.

Like the whole country we are very distressed at the news that keeps coming in of more women being raped and murdered. We need to build a strong women’s movement, centrally including poor and working class women who the majority, and including all women without regard for where they were born, to bring this crisis to an end. The government is failing us, the police are failing us, the courts are failing us, the political parties are failing us and the media is failing us. The only way out of this crisis is to build women’s power in a mass democratic movement.

We have our stokvels and other livelihood projects that we share, but we also need access to land so that we can build food sovereignty. Land and wealth must be fairly shared.

We will welcome guests from a number of organisations at the event.

We also wish to express our solidarity with Nomzamo Zondo and all our comrades at SERI who have come under attack by the growing fascist forces that are organising around xenophobia. SERI has always stood with the struggles of the oppressed and we stand with them. An injury to one is an injury to all.

Women have faced patriarchy for so long. Now is the time to show the world that the place of a woman is not in the kitchen, it is in the struggle. Women’s power is the foundation of the living politics .

Womandla!

Contact:

Khunjuzwa Nomtebe 073 042 1479
Zipho Maphela 069 572 1094
Bongiwe Nkabinde 061 928 0661