This August we honour the women of South Africa

11 August 2026
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

This August we honour the women of South Africa

This August, in women’s month, we speak of the comrades who are mothers, daughters, sisters and grandmothers, comrades who wake up every morning in the shack settlements and carry the weight of a country that has forgotten them.

We honour the women who keep their families going under conditions of brutal impoverishment and the women who resist oppression. We honour the women in our movement.

But this is not a month of celebration.

No woman is fully free in South Africa. All women are at risk of violence. Impoverished women remain profoundly oppressed.

There is no celebration when women continue to live under very dangerous conditions.

There is no celebration when a woman must walk to a communal tap after dark and risk rape or attack.

There is no celebration when there is no electricity, no running water, no toilets, and no safety for children.

There is no celebration when a woman does not know if her home will be standing tomorrow because of evictions, fires, or political violence.

For millions of impoverished women in shacks, tin houses and backyards, every day is a fight for survival.

To celebrate while all this is true is to lie.

This August we honour all the women of our movement who refused to accept poverty as fate.

We honour Nqobile Nzuza who was murdered by a police officer on a road blockade in Cato Crest on 30 September 2013. She was seventeen years old and doing her matric. She joined the road blockade in protest against the brutal attacks on the Marikana Land Occupation in Cato Manor by the eThekwini Municipality. She was committed to the struggle for land.

We honour Comrade Thuli Ndlovu, a leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo in KwaNdengezi.
She fought for land, for housing, and for the dignity of her community. She was assassinated on 27 September 2014 for confronting oppression.

We honour Comrade Nokuthula Mabaso, a leader of eKhenana Commune and of the Abahlali Women’s League. She was a mother, an organiser, and a builder of a community that fed itself and governed itself. She was assassinated on 5 May 2022 while her community was under attack. She knew that poor people must seize the right to land and to live with dignity.

Our brave comrades refused oppression and insisted on land and dignity. Thuli and Nokuthula were leaders.

We also honour other women who have given their lives in the struggle for justice.

Fikile Ntshangase was a leading member of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation (MCEJO) which opposed the destruction of people’s land and homes by coal mining. She was assassinated on 22 October 2020.

Babita Deokaran was an honest civil servant and a whistleblower in the Gauteng Department of Health. She exposed corruption and the theft of public money meant for the public hospitals and clinics that serve the poor. She was assassinated in 2021 for refusing to look away as powerful and dangerous men looted the healthcare system.

We have no interest in politicians who come with speeches and flowers and say nothing about the oppression we live today and nothing about our leaders who have given their lives in the struggle against this oppression.

Real honour means:

1.⁠ ⁠Secure access to land and decent housing so no woman sleeps in fear of eviction or fire.
2.⁠ Access to basic services such as water, electricity, sanitation, and safe public lighting in every settlement.
3.⁠ ⁠An end to political killings and intimidation of women organisers.
4.⁠ ⁠An end to gender-based violence in homes, streets, schools and communities.
5.⁠ ⁠Decent work, healthcare and education so women are not forced to choose between feeding their children and their own health.
6. Reproductive healthcare and contraception available without humiliation or delay.
7. A livable guaranteed income in recognition of the unpaid care work that holds families and communities together.
8. Decisive action to reduce food prices on essential items.
9. An end to attempts to turn poor women against migrant and refugee women, since the enemy is landlessness, unemployment and state neglect, not our neighbours.
10.⁠ ⁠Accountability for the killings of Nqobile, Thuli, Nokuthula, Fikile, Babita and all the other murdered and assassinated women activists whose cases were closed and forgotten.

Poor women are not asking to be celebrated. We are demanding to be safe, to be housed, to be heard, to be alive.

Until that happens, August cannot be a month of celebration. It must be a month of remembering, a month of organising, a month of struggle.

We honour Nqobile. We honour Thuli. We honour Nokuthula. We honour Babita.
We honour every woman in every shack settlement who continues to fight despite everything.

Aluta Continua.

The struggle continues.

Thabisa Maphela 069 572 1094
Thembeka Shangase 064 924 2289