Women’s History Month: Militant Organizing of Women

During this month of celebration of African Women, we must take a moment to reflect on the militant organizing of our sisters in the past to better understand how we can organize in the present. It is in this spirit of wanting to build revolutionary organization and mass action, that we should think about the militant resistance actions of Aug 9, 1956—Anti-Pass March—where 20, 000 women joined forces to struggle against the colonial apartheid system. 

Let us not forget, that for more than a hundred years, women in South Africa have organized themselves in mass mobilizations for the defense of their interests as women and the interests of their class. In the last 100 years, women of South Africa’s most frequent cause has been the persistent opposition to the pass laws from the early 1900s to its most known resistance in 1956. The pass laws required African women and men to carry written permission from their white employers allowing them to legally enter certain areas. If they were found without a permit they could be arrested and face severe punishment and even “deportation” to another place. 

As early as March 1912, a group of African women protested against this form of colonial oppression. Women from the Orange Free State took to the streets with a petition against passes with signatures from over 5,000 people and sent it to Prime Minister, Louis Botha. They were met with harsh arrests and succeeded in pushing the implementation of the pass laws to a much later stage.

How can we compare the significance of the 1956 Anti-Pass March to those of us working to organize and develop militant actions against colonialism and capitalism?

1. Anti-Pass Campaign and Colonial-Capitalism.

The fact that women have led the struggle against the Pass Law system is of great significance to the African working class struggle against capitalism. Why? Because the Pass system was an essential pillar of controlling the movement of labor. Passes were used to control the movement of African and Indian people, ensuring the provision of a cheap labor source that worked arm-in-arm with the colonial segregation laws of that time. A protest against the control of labor is an attack on the domination of capitalism and colonialism which divided Africa through their artificially created border of today.

In the Women’s Charter of the Federation of South African Women (an organization of anti-apartheid women political organizers that led the 1956 march), they identify class society as one that should be eliminated. They said this about the conflict between the colonizer and the colonized :

“These are evils that need not exist. They exist because the society in which we live is divided into poor and rich, into non-European and European. They exist because there are privileges for the few, discrimination and harsh treatment for the many. We women have stood and will stand shoulder to shoulder with our menfolk in a common struggle against poverty, race and class discrimination…”

2. Women and mass organization. 

While mass mobilization was a new phenomenon for the ANC male political leadership in the 1950s, for the women of the 1956 Anti-Pass march this was nothing new. Women had always been a feature in the anti-pass campaign and other expressions of public political upheaval. Women embraced the idea of mass campaigns long before the men did. They led the way. They organized dynamic action against all forms of colonial oppression, like the ban on brewing traditional beer, high food prices, high rents, and passes for women. 

The courage of the women in the early demonstration of 1913 was extraordinary. Women went to jail for their anti-pass protests and refused to admit guilt by paying bail or fines. These efforts delayed the implementation of passes for women by 40 years.

Another important element is that the 1956 march was organized by women of different races, ideological backgrounds, and social statuses. There were Communist women, churchwomen, trade unionists, African nationalists, the peasantry, and the upper middle class of black and white South Africa, brought together by a common cause of striking back at the oppressive and exploitative system of colonial Apartheid. African women were not going to carry them. To these many different women, despite coming from different backgrounds, they all put forward this demand: clear and non-negotiable. 

3. Fighting for women, to fight for universal freedom.

They recognized the complex struggle of being women in class struggle. They both understood the specific oppressions of women within the broader colonial oppression and exploitation of all people under the apartheid system: their goals were ‘to fight for women’s rights and for the full economic citizenship of all’. 

As is shown by the Charter of the Federation of South African Women (1954), women understood the complexity of organizing for the liberation of all people when faced with obstacles from their own comrades:

"The law has lagged behind the development of society; it no longer corresponds to the actual social and economic position of women. The law has become an obstacle to the progress of women and therefore a brake on the whole society. This intolerable condition would not be allowed to continue were it not for the refusal of large sections of our menfolk to concede to us women the rights and privileges which they demand for themselves. 

We shall teach the men they cannot hope to liberate themselves from the evils of discrimination and prejudice as long as they fail to extend to women complete and unqualified equality in law and practice." 

This showed a clear understanding that they were committed to revolution, like many of us are, we must continue to struggle for a revolution with the revolutionary organizations. This is a contradiction we confront today. 

It is along these lines of organized and militant action that we remember the women not only of 1956 but all working women who struggled against the exploitation that feeds colonialism and capitalism. We salute them and all those revolutionary women who fight to destroy the colonial-capitalist system and build a new society! 

Forever Forward, Unafraid Together Amandla Ngawethu!