No Woman, No Revolution, Part 6b
The Women's National Coalition
and
The
“Women's Charter for Effective Equality”
In
the history of women’s organisations in South Africa there have been many
attempts to create enduring structures. The table below, compiled from searches
on the Internet, lists some 15 of the principal ones.
Another
source is a book. Twenty-four years after Cheryl Walker’s 1982 book “Women and
Resistance in South Africa”, Shireen Hassim in 2006 produced “Women's
Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority”, published
by University of Wisconsin Press. Useful parts of this book can be read through
Google Books.
Hassim’s
book contains a lot of detail on the way that these and other women’s organisations
came about, who was involved, those relationships and problems that motivated
their formation, and those that led to their demise.
FEDTRAW
Calendar, 1987
Hassim
notes that Walker’s book was well known to important actors during the UDF
period (roughly, 1983-1990), when problems arose that were similar to those
that Walker described as existing between the FSAW and the ANC Women’s League
in the 1950s.
Among
others, the table lists six different organisations that were formed between 1981
and 1991, not including the FSAW (Fedsaw), which was also the subject of an
attempted revival. These seven attempts, which were not the only ones,
corresponded in time with the rise and fall of the United Democratic Front, the
UDF.
In
addition, the ANC and the SACP were legalised in February, 1990, and the ANC
Women’s League was quick to return to the country and to re-establish itself.
Of
all these, total eight, organisations, established or re-established in the
country between 1981 and 1991, the only one that survives in 2013 is the ANC
Women’s League. None of the others survived beyond the early 1990s.
Year
|
Organisation
|
Leaders
|
1918
|
Bantu Women's League (BWL)
|
Founded by Charlotte Maxeke
|
1933
|
National Council of African Women (NCAW)
|
First President: Charlotte
Maxeke
|
1943
|
The ANC officially admits women members
|
President, A B Xuma
|
1948
|
ANC Women's League (ANCWL)
|
Ida Mtwana, President
|
1954
|
Federation of South African Women (FSAW)
|
Ray Alexander, Dora Tamana,
Josie Mphama
|
1955
|
Black Sash
(Women's Defence of the Constitution League)
|
Jean Sinclair, Ruth Foley
and others
|
1975
|
Black Women's Federation
|
Fatima Meer, Winnie Mandela
|
1981
|
The United Women's Organisation (UWO)
|
Dora Tamana, Mildred Lesia,
Amy Thornton
|
1983
|
Natal Organisation of Women (NOW)
|
Phumzile Mlambo, Nozizwe
Madlala, Victoria Mxenge
|
1984
|
Federation of Transvaal Women (FEDTRAW)
|
Sister Bernard Ncube,
Jessie Duarte
|
1986
|
United Women's Congress (UWCO)
|
From UWO
|
1987
|
Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw) re-launch
|
Cheryl Carolus,
Secretary-General
|
1987
|
The UDF Women’s Congress
|
Frances Baard
|
1991
|
Women's National Coalition (WNCSA)
|
Frene Ginwala, Anne
Letsepe, convenors
|
2006
|
Progressive Women’s Movement (PWMSA)
|
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka,
Mummy Japhta
|
The
organisation that the attached and linked document relates to is the “Women’s National Coalition”. It was a
vehicle for intervention in the CODESA talks and for the creation of a set of
demands or suggestions that were used to lobby the ANC prior to the 1994
elections, and then after the elections, as an input to the
Constitution-writing process that followed.
The
creation of the Women’s National Coalition was driven by Frene Ginwala, who
became Speaker of Parliament after the elections, and later by the academic
Sheila Meintjes. The structure was more like an NGO (funded from Canada) than a
democracy, and the method of collecting a mandate, described in the document as
“focus groups”, was a difficulty and occasioned acrimonious internal strife,
according to Hassim.
The
document includes a description found on the Internet, and the Women’s National
Coalition’s “Women's Charter for Effective Equality”, taken from the ANC web
site. There is no reference to the original Women’s Charter of 1954, or to the
Federation of South African Women that created it, and which organised the
women’s march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on the 9th of
August 1956. This conspicuous omission has continued to be common.
In
between the mid-1990s when the Women’s National Coalition faded, and 2006, there
was no claimant to the status of a national South African women’s organisation.
In 2006 the Progressive Women’s Movement
was launched, claiming to fulfil the requirement. Whether it does so, or not,
is the matter that is set out for examination in the next item of this part of
the course.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: The
Women’s National Coalition and its Charter for Effective Equality.
