9 August 1988
I shall start by expressing appreciation to the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid for inviting the African National Congress of South Africa to participate in this solemn meeting in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Struggle of Women in South Africa and Namibia, and the thirty-second anniversary of South Africa Women's Day. We attach great significance to being allowed to participate because it affords us, the oppressed people of South Africa and Namibia, an opportunity of talking to all mankind through this Committee.
This meeting is also important because it takes place at a crucial time in the history of South Africa - indeed, of the world. Although on the world scene we are witnessing signs of improvement in relations between the super-Powers, some progress in disarmament and peace efforts, and the lessening of some of the regional tensions and conflicts, with regard to South Africa we have not, regrettably, noticed any sign that the racist regime is yet ready to surrender power and participate with the people in the establishment of a non-racial, democratic and just South Africa. If anything, we are noticing fruitless efforts by Botha to resist the inevitable overthrow of apartheid. The intensification of the mass democratic struggle has led to the situation where the racist regime is now in a state of utter confusion and indecision and inability to govern without resort to increasing violence and terror.
The Botha regime is on the rampage, fighting for its survival. The target of its counter-offensive is all the forces that fight for a non-racial democracy. No, it brooks no opposition of any kind and excludes no one from its campaign of repression: Dulcie September, Sicelo Dhlomo, Mazizi Maqekeza and Johannes Nkomo have all been brutally murdered on Pretoria's orders, by hired assassins.
Albie Sachs is maimed permanently by decision of the Botha regime. Political activists have been and are being hanged in Pretoria in a veritable massacre. To accomplish their regional designs, the racists have butchered and starved to death thousands in Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and the rest of southern Africa.
Now, in a continuing effort to intimidate everybody and paralyze the struggle, the minority regime has further extended the provisions of the state of emergency to make all democratic political struggles illegal - thus, the banning of the
United Democratic Front (UDF), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and other democratic organizations as well as their leaders.
Not even children are spared the brutality of apartheid. Thousands of them not only have been arrested but have also been physically and psychologically tortured and forced to confess to crimes they did not commit. Indeed, many of them have been maimed and killed.
The Pretoria regime has declared war on our women as well. Black women in South Africa suffer under all the oppressive laws and regulations that apply to black men. But in addition, within each racial group - to an extent, even among
whites - women suffer extra disabilities in the political, economic, and social fields.
Let me take the Committee back to Dulcie September, the ANC representative murdered in France on 28 March 1988. This gentle, friendly, unassuming woman was to be a victim of, to us, an unknown assassin, but, to the racist regime, a hired hit-man who shot her five times with a .22 calibre pistol as she was opening the ANC Office in Paris. This was a great woman who died at her post as honourably and with as much dignity as any fighter who falls on the battlefield. Dulcie September exemplified the fact that millions of our women have been active participants in, and are today still part and parcel of, the struggle against oppression and for national liberation.
Our womenfolk continue to participate in all the mass campaigns. In general, participation of women has not been primarily in women's organizations but within the broader-based community organizations and trade unions. That is as it should be. The struggle of the women is nothing else but the struggle of the oppressed.
In our case, the emancipation of women is intertwined with the struggle for national liberation. As President O. R. Tambo correctly stated:
"Our struggle would be less than powerful and our national and social emancipation could never be complete if we continue to treat the women of our country as dependant minors and objects of one form of exploitation or another. Certainly, no longer should it be that a woman's place is in the kitchen. In our beleaguered country the woman's place is in the battlefront of struggle".
Side by side with her man, I might add.
In other words, we know that we cannot win liberation or build a strong movement and country without the active and continuous participation of women. We cannot mobilize women, or indeed any other group, if we do not address issues of relevance to us - that is, issues that are our immediate concerns and directly and visibly affect our lives - and also ensure that we as women are involved in the solutions at all levels, including the highest organs of decision-making.
The many layers of oppression as women, as blacks, as workers endured by African women and the various disabilities imposed on us all intermesh into a tangled web. And it is only those trapped within that web who can truly appreciate its weaknesses and strengths. It is the experience of oppression that provides the knowledge, the motivation and the capacity to mobilize and organize around particular issues, as well as the understanding to enable the connections to be made between the women, local campaigns and the wider national struggle.
As a result, our women's involvement in the liberation struggle has had a distinctive character. First, among women activists there is a general recognition that their equality within the social, economic and political system can be achieved only through the struggle for national liberation. Secondly, often women have used their traditional role as mothers in a revolutionary way, by laying the basis for the politicization of the youth, and in turn being politicized by them. Thirdly, one in three African households is now headed by women due to the migrant labour system, the imprisonment of their husbands and sons, and so forth. Consequently, women have assumed a communal responsibility for children and young people and have sought to protect and defend them. For example, there have been occasions where women have placed themselves in front of demonstrations deliberately, in an effort to stop the police and army firing on the marchers.
Finally, like our men and children, our womenfolk have been and are there in the prisons and dungeons of racist South Africa; they have been banned and banished from their homes; they have been tortured and murdered, and they have been exiled from their country, South Africa. In short, they are bravely bearing the brunt of the racist oppressive system - and they do it with undaunted courage and dignity.
We call upon the international community as a matter of urgency to overcome all obstacles in the way of the imposition of comprehensive mandatory sanctions against apartheid South Africa to strengthen our campaign for the unconditional release of all political prisoners. We call upon the international community to campaign for the release of the Sharpeville Six and all other prisoners condemned to death, amongst them women patriots Theresa Ramashamola and Daisy Modise; and to join us in our demand for the unbanning of the African National Congress and the 17 democratic movements, including the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
Our womenfolk and the South African National Congress wish to express their appreciation for the support and solidarity they have received and continue to enjoy from most quarters of the world. However, the international community must intensify all efforts to uproot apartheid lock, stock and barrel, not merely amend it.
Lastly, we wish to reiterate our support for the gallant women of Namibia, under the leadership of SWAPO; the women of Palestine, under the PLO; and our friends in Western Sahara, East Timor and El Salvador.
We are gathered here to honour those gallant women of South Africa and Namibia, to reassure them that they are not alone in their fight against what the United Nations has aptly characterized as a crime against humanity - apartheid. We are gathered here as we have reached that dark period just before the dawn of freedom, before the birth of a non-racial, democratic and just South Africa and Namibia.