No Woman, No
Revolution, Part 4
Women’s Charter
On 17 April 1954, fourteen months before the Freedom Charter was adopted in
Kliptown on 26 June 1955, the Federation of South African Women adopted the
Women’s Charter (attached, and linked below).
Following on from what we have read in the last three weeks
(from Zetkin, Kollontai,
Luxemburg, Lenin, and the Comintern), we can see the same thread
re-emerging several decades later here in South Africa, as for example in this
short passage from the Women’s Charter:
“We women
do not form a society separate from the men. There is only one society, and it
is made up of both women and men. As women we share the problems and anxieties
of our men, and join hands with them to remove social evils and obstacles to
progress.”
The Women’s Charter was not directed against men; nor did it
hold out women as a separate class of people as compared to the men. It opposed
such a separation.
Thus it placed the question of women in the mainstream, and
then it went on to say:
“It is our
intention to carry out a nation-wide programme of education that will bring
home to the men and women of all national groups the realisation that freedom
cannot be won for any one section or for the people as a whole as long as we women
are kept in bondage.”
It is very sad to read the following, from the women of 55
years ago, knowing that it is still as true today as it was then:
“We know
what it is to keep family life going in pondokkies and shanties, or in
overcrowded one-room apartments. We know the bitterness of children taken to
lawless ways, of daughters becoming unmarried mothers whilst still at school,
of boys and girls growing up without education, training or jobs at a living
wage.”
On the question of forms of organisation of women, a matter
to which the CU will return in the next item of this part, the Women’s Charter
as such has little to say, except for the following items from the list of
demands:
- For
the removal of all laws that restrict free movement, that prevent or
hinder the right of free association and activity in democratic
organisations, and the right to participate in the work of these
organisations.
- To
build and strengthen women's sections in the National Liberatory
movements, the organisation of women in trade unions, and through the
peoples' varied organisation.
- To
co-operate with all other organisations that have similar aims
in South Africa as well as throughout the world.
The 1954 Women’s Charter was non-committal on the question of women’s
organisation. This was perhaps a sign that the matter was already controversial
within the liberation movement. The ANC Women’s League had been founded in
1948; we will see in later sessions that the ANC WL had its way in the 1950s
and again in the 1990s and in the 2000s, obstructing the growth of a general
women’s democratic mass movement.
The Women’s Charter of 1954 stands as a monument to South African
women’s determination to organise independently as women, but this is an
aspiration that has yet to be realised.
[The image above is of a 1987 FEDSAW Western Cape poster]
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Women’s Charter, FEDSAW Founding Conference, 1954.
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