Four women who defied apartheid return to Union Buildings 70 years later

Sophie de Bruyn stood at the Union Buildings in Tshwane on Sunday, seventy years after she helped lead one of the most consequential acts of defiance in South African history. She was one of four women at the forefront of the August 9, 1956 march against the apartheid government’s pass laws, a day when more than 20,000 women converged on the seat of power carrying petitions signed by roughly 100,000 people.

“The joy of that solidarity, the triumph of knowing that we could break the back of oppression is a fire that still burns deep within me even today,” de Bruyn told the gathered crowd.

President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the same steps where those women had stood in silence for thirty minutes, their quiet resistance carrying the weight of a nation’s conscience. He was direct about what that march meant. “The Women’s March of 1956 was not a footnote in our struggle for freedom. That helped to change the course, the character and the leadership of that struggle. It demonstrated that women were not merely supporters of the struggle. They were its leaders, its organisers and its authors.”

That silence, Ramaphosa explained, was not born of fear or submission. It was courage gathering strength, the resolve of women who understood the justice of their cause. For thirty minutes, no chants broke the air, no speeches echoed from the steps. Yet that stillness, he said, awakened the conscience of a nation.

Ramaphosa saluted the four women who led the march: Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophie de Bruyn. He was equally insistent, though, that thousands of unnamed women had strengthened their resolve, and many of those names remain lost to history. The President called on families and anyone with knowledge of the marchers to come forward and share their stories with the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation and the Sophia and Henry De Bruyn Legacy Foundation through the “Write Her into History” campaign, an effort to restore the names and stories of 1956’s women to national memory and complete what he called “the roll call of courage and honour.”

Since 1994, South Africa has made substantial progress. Women now occupy the country’s highest offices, serving as Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Chief Justice, National Speaker of the National Assembly, Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Public Protector and Auditor-General. The nation ranks highly on global indices for women’s empowerment, gender parity, educational outcomes, financial inclusion and political representation. “We are proud to stand on the shoulders of giants, of the imbokodo of 1956,” Ramaphosa said.

The gains are real. So is the unfinished work.

The government has classified gender-based violence and femicide as a national disaster. Ramaphosa drew a stark parallel between the fears women faced in 1956 and those they confront today. “In 1956, the women of our country lived in fear of being arrested for not having a pass. Today, women live in fear of the gender-based violence that continues to stalk them in the streets of our country, in the pathways of our villages and in their homes.”

He called on men and boys to become part of the solution, urging society to prevent violence through engagement with young men and support from traditional, community and religious leaders. Breaking the silence surrounding such violence is essential, he stressed, because choosing to look away renders communities complicit in the crime.

De Bruyn echoed that call. She spoke of how the women of 1956 marched not without fear, but with determination and courage to confront a brutal government. She urged a new generation of women to rise against the contemporary challenges of gender-based violence, corruption and inequality.

Ramaphosa closed with a commitment framed as an obligation to the marchers themselves. “We commit to build a South Africa in which no woman’s potential is limited by poverty, prejudice, violence or discrimination. We will build a nation in which women are equal in law, equal in opportunity, equal in safety and equal in power.”

Whether the “Write Her into History” campaign succeeds in recovering the names of those thousands of unnamed women will determine, in part, how completely the country honours that promise.