The time has come for historians to investigate and appreciate the measure and detail of the contribution that women have made to realise the democratic order enjoyed today.

This was the view of former Speaker of Parliament Dr Frene Ginwala when she spoke at the inauguration of the Lilian Ngoyi Memorial Lecture at Unisa.

The event was organised by the university in conjunction with the Department of Arts and Culture.

She said that until recently, the focus had been on class and colour while gender was ignored. She said she hoped the Lilian Ngoyi Memorial Lecture would contribute towards correcting that omission.

The memorial lecture was in honour of the late Ngoyi, who was one of the leaders of about 20 000 women who marched on the Union Building on August 9 1956 protesting against the carrying of passes by women.

The time has come for historians to investigate and appreciate the measure and detail of the contribution that women have made to realise the democratic order enjoyed today.

This was the view of former Speaker of Parliament Dr Frene Ginwala when she spoke at the inauguration of the Lilian Ngoyi Memorial Lecture at Unisa.

The event was organised by the university in conjunction with the Department of Arts and Culture.

She said that until recently, the focus had been on class and colour while gender was ignored. She said she hoped the Lilian Ngoyi Memorial Lecture would contribute towards correcting that omission.

The memorial lecture was in honour of the late Ngoyi, who was one of the leaders of about 20 000 women who marched on the Union Building on August 9 1956 protesting against the carrying of passes by women.

According to both Unisa and the Department of Arts and Culture, the lecture wifi be an annual event in memory of what the women did on that day.

Ginwala said the pass laws were introduced mainly to restrict women from moving freely in the country of their birth. She said that at the time, their husbands were working far from home mosily in the mines and the government did not want their wives to visit them. They could also not work where they wanted to, she said.

We must therefore recognise that the march on Pretoria was the culmination of nearly 60 years of a struggle by African women against the policies and desires of colonial rulers to define and limit their economic role in the society, said Gin~ wala.

She said there was also a problem in those days because every black person was required to carry a service book, indicating by whom they were employed.

The book had to be renewed monthly.

Lilian Ngoyi is honoured for her role in that history-making march because she is the one who knocked at the door of the then Prime Minister JG Strijdom to hand over a memorandum from the women. Strijdom was not in his office on that day.

U Frene Ginwala delivers the Lilian Ngoyi Memorial lecture.

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3829220	PRETORIA NEWS	28 Aug 2006	3	Its time to honour the heroines of yesteryearIts time to honour the heroines of yesteryear	JPG	PDF	TXT

The time has come for historians to investigate and appreciate the measure and detail of the contribution that women have made to realise the democratic order enjoyed today. This was the view of former Speaker of Parliament Dr Frene Ginwala when...

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