Women Leading the Way 

The process and progress of nonviolence in South Africa before 1960 is well
documented. In literature and film, space is given over to descriptions and
theories of the methods and impulses for action in the campaigns of the early
1900's led by Gandhi and in the later Defiance campaign of the fifties led by
the ANC.1

However, following the banning and imprisonment or exile of the leaders of
the nonviolent movement in the mid 1960's, more attention has since been
focussed on violent incidents than nonviolent.2 Were the actions of the
Defiance Campaign an expression of pragmatic nonviolence which, when the
government showed itself to be resistant to its power, was swapped for the
more immediate effects of retaliatory violence? My experience of life in
South Africa in the late 1980's would suggest differently.

I went to South Africa in 1988 under the auspices of Quaker Peace and
Service, a London based organization, with the intent of helping set up a
Quaker Peace Centre in Cape Town. The Centre had a manifold purpose: it aimed
to provide resources and training in conflict resolution and peacemaking to
members of both the black and white community. It supported and trained
nonviolent activists in the black townships. (Activities centred around
training people as marshals to ensure that the big demonstrations and
funerals were conducted in an organized and peaceful manner and helping
groups plan small nonviolent actions.)

The centre also helped start a series of small businesses which were run
along co-operative lines and set up a series of community schools in areas
where there were not enough government schools.During my time at the centre I
encountered many many tales of resistance and action against the apartheid
system; too many to document in one article. Instead I will focus on those
initiated and sustained by black women. These stories provide an insight into
the compassion, courage and commitment of these women in the face of
unceasing repression and brutality.

In Cape Town in the late seventies, the white government initiated a campaign
of eviction of black people without passbooks from designated areas. This
meant that people who had set up shacks and other more permanent forms of
housing that were not in the district given over to black housing were
ordered to leave the area and return to their homelands. (The government had
decreed 13% of the total land mass of South Africa as tribal reserves where
those black South Africans without permanent employment in the white cities
had to stay.)

Many of the people faced with eviction had grown up in Cape Town and
considered it to be their homeland; they knew little about life in the rural
areas and had no desire to go there. Some were women whose husbands were
working in Cape Town and living in single sex workers' hostels. Some were
people who had drifted to the urban area in the hope of finding employment.
The majority of these people did not have a passbook or their books were not
up to date. (The Pass law system underpinned the structure of apartheid; it
allowed the government to restrict access to areas and to employment to those
who had books in order. Those found wanting faced immediate detention or
deportation.)

A campaign of resistance was organized with deputations to local councils and
the national government. When their pleas for permission to remain were
ignored, the women of these threatened communities initiated a strategy of
nonviolent action that was eventually to annul the existing pass law system
and grant them the right to remain in their place of preference.

They did this by walking. When the bulldozers came in the night and destroyed
their houses, they gathered up what they could salvage.  When they were
herded onto the buses and trains and carted back to their designated
homelands, they took as many possessions with them as they could. When they
were ordered off the transport and were told that this was their new home,
they waited until the officials had disappeared over the horizon and then
started the long journey back. Many women were pregnant, had small children
to nurse and carry or were laden down with possessions. Step by step they
made their way back to Cape Town;( for some a distance of over 2000 miles )
and rebuilt their houses and their lives. The journey was perilous; main
routes had to be avoided for fear of road blocks, food was scarce and women
were dependent on the goodwill of people they met along their way.  For some
women, respite from the long journey was short for no sooner had they settled
when the bulldozers would return and the process of dislocation and
relocation would be repeated. I met women who had been moved four or five
times in a period of eighteen months. This campaign endured from 1977 until
1985. Their resistance broke the government's will who in 1985 when they
abolished the pass law system stated that when women were prepared to walk
the length of the country there was very little the government could do to
stop them.3

Women also took the initiative in the coloured township of Manenberg where
gang fighting and intimidation was an increasing problem. People felt trapped
in their houses, too scared to go out because of the violence of the gang
rivalry. This had led to feelings of isolation and helplessness.  A group of
concerned mothers and sisters, worried about the safety of their children and
siblings who were involved in gang activities, wanted to find a way in which
to face up to the gangs but were too scared to do it individually. After a
series of meetings which were held away from the township, the group arranged
for a series of electric alarms to be put on all the street corners where the
gangs used to congregate and each woman was given a whistle. When these women
saw gangs approaching they would blow their whistles or set off the alarms.
This was a signal for all the women on the housing estate to rush out onto
the streets and stand together in defiance of the scare tactics that the
gangs employed. This system was very successful with the gangs scattering as
soon as they heard the whistle blowing. The system transformed the township;
in a matter of weeks people felt able to venture out of their houses and many
gang members began to question their involvement in the gangs. Gang fighting
in the Manenberg area decreased dramatically.

These stories illustrate the commitment of the black women I met to the
nonviolent struggle. Their nonviolent principles were tested on a regular
basis.   Many of their lives were touched daily by incidents of violence. 
They lived in high crime areas, their children belonged to armed gangs, they
had to run the gauntlet of police and army roadblocks in order to go to work
or to get food. Yet their dedication and belief in the power of nonviolence
to overcome these problems was awe inspiring. When the United Democratic
Front called for consumer boycotts, the women in Cape Town townships not only
boycotted white owned businesses but also started up consumer co-operatives
where women could get together and buy food in bulk from farms and black
owned shops. When the education boycott was at its height, women, concerned
about their children's need for education, started up community schools,
sewed uniforms, provided lunches and often taught the children themselves.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing to witness was the spirit of love and
compassion which characterised these nonviolent actions. There seemed to be
little evidence of active distrust or dislike of the white community.  Since
leaving South Africa I have spent time thinking about this. Many of the women
I met had at some stage in their lives been employed as domestic servants by
white families. As domestics, they were entrusted with care of the families'
children and nursed, fed and clothed them. The black women gave love to these
children and received love in return. Many of my white contemporaries in
South Africa still speak of their black nanny with admiration and devotion
and some mention how they saw much more of her than their white mother. Is it
possible that this experience of loving and being loved by white children
translated itself into a commitment to principled nonviolence?  And if so,
what became of the love that the white children had for their black nanny?
Perhaps it was transformed to indifference or disgust as children became
inculturated into the apartheid system.

In the nonviolence field, I find that too often the stories of women changing
their own and others lives go unnoticed. These women were a source of
inspiration to me; they empowered and encouraged me and by writing this I
hope to place them on the pages of South African nonviolent history.
Rebecca Spence

Footnotes:
1. See for example: Gandhi M. K. 1928. Satyagraha in South Africa. Navajivan
Publishing house, Islamabad. Kuper L. 1957. Passive resistance in South
Africa. Yale University Press, New Haven.
2. See for example: Davis S. 1987. Apartheid's Rebels: inside South Africa's
Hidden War. Yale University Press, New Haven. Mufson. S. 1990. Fighting
Years. Beacon Press, Boston.
3. As told to the Quaker Peace and Service Team in 1985.