As we celebrate this Women’s Month in 2023, we of course, must think about the many sacrifices that women have made for the freedoms we enjoy today. We are grateful to the thousands of women who marched to parliament on the 9th of August in 1956 to protest oppressive pass laws. We also gratefully remember the countless women before and after who, in many different spaces continued the struggle for our freedom. In tribute and gratitude, we are however also called to think about what freedom means to us. What does it mean to be free?
What does freedom look like for the elderly woman, working as a domestic worker, who travels from Khayelitsha to Constantia via taxi, now impacted by the taxi strike in Cape Town – likely losing days of her income leading to some difficult decisions needing to be made to survive for the next month? What does freedom look like for the woman held captive in her home by the psychological and physical violence she experiences from an abusive partner? What does freedom feel like for the girl child in class either being ignored or sexually harassed by her mathematics or science teacher? What does freedom look like for the transgender woman daily harassed and feeling unsafe on the streets as she navigates her daily life? What are the possibilities for freedom the woman farm worker, reliant on an abusive partner and employer, facing the intersection of housing, food and job insecurity? What freedom does the high school learner from Mitchell’s Plain imagine as she thinks about the dead body still lying outside her gate – killed the night before by gun violence – and the worry she feels about walking to and from school? What freedom did Anene Booysen, Karabo Mokoena, Uyinene Mrwetyana and the many other women killed by men’s violence imagine for themselves and for those they loved?
The question of freedom is the operative one as we think about women’s month and the many freedoms we have gained, and those that we need to continue fighting for – for ourselves and for those most marginalized in our society.