Every year, SA marks Women’s Day on August 9. For some, it has become another public holiday. For others, it is an opportunity for businesses to launch Women’s Month promotions.
However, the day’s true significance deserves greater reflection.
Women’s Day commemorates the 1956 march on the Union Buildings in which 20,000 women united to protest the extension of apartheid’s pass laws.
Their courage was a declaration that women would no longer accept being pushed to the margins of society.
Their actions helped shape the democratic SA we know today.
Years later, their legacy lives on, not only in history books but in the stories unfolding around us every day.
Those stories were on full display recently at Nelson Mandela University’s Business School, where more than 100 women gathered for a seminar centred on one powerful word — resilience.
Deputy vice-chancellor for learning and teaching, Prof Muki Moeng, told those present that resilience was not passive endurance, but active resistance and creative rebuilding.
“As a breast cancer survivor, courage means wearing your scars with pride,” she said.
Resilience was there in the story of MBA student Yoliswa Williams, who rose from growing up in a shack in New Brighton to leading more than 120 staff members, owning property and helping to educate her sisters.
It was found in business owner Alasia Hayward, who rebuilt her life through personal hardship, business setbacks and illness without allowing any of them to define her future.
These are not extraordinary stories because the women involved possess rare talents.
They are extraordinary because they demonstrate what becomes possible when determination meets opportunity.
We must continue telling stories of women who overcome obstacles, lead businesses, innovate, mentor others and strengthen their communities.
Not because they diminish the challenges, but because they remind us of what resilience looks like.
The women who marched in 1956 did not join the extraordinary protest so that future generations could merely survive.
They marched so women could thrive, lead and shape the country’s future.
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