workingclasshistory:

On this day, 9 August 1956, 20,000 women in Pretoria, South Africa marched against pass laws: apartheid laws curtailing freedom of movement for Black and Indian people. The Federation of South African Women-organised demonstration delivered a petition against the laws with 100,000 signatures and the participants sang “Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo” meaning ‘Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock’. The protest kickstarted a wave of civil disobedience across the country over two years in which thousands of women were arrested, until African National Congress leaders panicked and called it off. August 9 is commemorated today in South Africa as Women’s Day.
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