Speech by Ronnie Kasrils, MP

Minister for Intelligence Services

National Women’s Day Celebration

Musanda

13 August 2004  

CARVE THEIR NAMES WITH PRIDE  

Distinguished guests  

Mmatshilo Motsei, a South African gender activist, who works with both women and men to break down the vicious cycle of violence that surrounds their lives,  reminds us of the importance of history. She reminds us how today; we must understand and learn from our past, our yesterday, so as to enable us to build our future, our tomorrow. In doing so, Mmatshilo says: 

I am today

I want to be tomorrow

I was yesterday

How can I be today

without my yesterday?

…Bring back my yesterday

Let me take my time

as I slowly sift it like sand

one grain after another.

Let me eventually carry it

not like a rock in my heart

but as a jewel in my soul1.

During this - our national women’s month - we as amakhangela, are gathered here today to celebrate our yesterday for our tomorrow.  

In doing so, we are reminded of the action required to safeguard and deepen our hard won democracy. We recall the dedication of ordinary women, who committed extraordinary deeds of sacrifice and bravery so that we could be free. We affirm the ideals that underpinned our struggle for liberty – non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy - which endure in our founding Constitution, which makes an emphatic break with our painful past.  

It is these ideals, which were ever present on the 9th of August 1956, when 20 000 women of all colours and creeds, from across the length and breadth of our country, converged on the Union Buildings. It was these ideals from which they drew their inspiration to stand firm and declare that they would not be intimidated or silenced by unjust laws. Their clarion call echoed throughout the land - wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo uzo kufa! You have touched the women, you have struck a rock, you will be crushed!  

They stood united in their opposition of the extension of the pernicious pass laws to African women. For them, passes were a symbol of their broader oppression. It was through the pass laws that the influx control system was enforced. It was influx control that turned their husbands into migrant workers and made them into widows on the so-called reserves. It was through the pass laws that they were deprived of their basic right to live with their husbands and to raise their children in stable family units.  

In the bundles of petitions, which contained over 100 000 signatures that the women left at the then-Prime Minister Strijdom’s door, they argued:  We shall not rest until all pass laws and all forms of permits restricting our freedoms have been abolished. We shall not rest until we have won for our children their fundamental rights of freedom, justice and security.  

In this way they linked their struggle for basic rights with that of the broader struggle for emancipation. They recognised that the primary task at hand was that of national liberation. However, they also warned that this struggle could not be won without the participation of women, nor could it simply be won for a section of our people.  

In doing so, the women of 1956 joined the millions of women throughout the world and across time that allied  their own struggles for equality , justice, peace with that of the broader societies in which they were located.  

They joined the mythical heroine Lysistrata of Ancient Greece, who called on Athenian and Spartan women to initiate  a sexual strike against men in order to end arduous Peloponnesian war, and whose name has been invoked centuries later to mobilise women for peace. They joined the women of the French Revolution, who in calling for ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ for all, marched on Versailles to demand women’s suffrage.  

They joined the many women that came before them, who fought against injustice in South Africa. Women like Emily Hobhouse, an English anti-war campaigner, who exposed the horror inflicted on Boer women and children in the concentration camps set up by the British during the South African War, previously known as the Anglo-Boer War.  

While Emily Hobhouse is held up simply as a Boer heroine, she in fact believed in freedom for all. This is reflected in a speech  she wrote for the inauguration of the Women’s Memorial in Bloemfontein in 1913, where she reminded the Afrikaner people of the reason why they had fought and called on them to bear this in mind in the coming decades. She urged them:  

…do not open your gates to the worst foes of freedom  – tyranny and selfishness … are not these the withholding from others…the very liberties and rights which you have valued and won for yourselves?2  

These powerful lines were omitted from later publications of her speech and were entirely ignored by apartheid politicians and historians. Given the recent demise of the New National Party, it is a great  pity that the architects of apartheid, including the erstwhile President Strijdom, failed to heed her great wisdom as well as the warning of the women of 1956, as so much suffering could have been avoided.   

The women of 1956 also joined the many women which followed them, that drew strength from their heroic deeds. Women like Victoria Mxenge, a veteran woma n and community activist, who took a brave decision to change her career later in her life, at the age of 35, from being a nurse to that of a lawyer, as she felt that the law was an important instrument from which to fight all forms of oppression.  

In 1981, the year she was admitted as an attorney, her husband Griffiths Mxenge, also a civil rights lawyer, was brutally murdered by police. Despite the adversity, which she had to overcome, Victoria Mxenge went on to ri se to prominence in the legal sphere, through assisting young people who had been detained and tortured by the security police. However, just four years after her husband’s killing, she was shot and axed to death at her home in Umlazi - she died in front of her children. Like her husband and so many others, her only ‘crime’ was to fight against a system that the world declared as a crime against humanity.  

Taken together, the collective actions of these brave women – Lillian Ngoyi, Amina Cachalia, Helen Joseph, Ruth First and Francis Baard - against all forms of injustice yesterday, remain our call to action  today. We owe it to their proud memory, not only to celebrate their gallant struggles, but also to use this opportunity to reflect on the extent to which we have realised the ideals for which they lived and died.

And in just ten years of democracy, we can claim proudly that as a nation we have taken significant strides in meeting these ideals. Their message - that our society cannot be truly free unless the women of our country are emancipated from all forms of oppression – carries through today and informs the intent of all our nation building efforts.  

Our progressive Constitution, adopted in 1996, which is acclaimed the world-over, enshrines the right to equality and provides for the establishment of a Commission on Gender Equality, to monitor, promote and advance the rights of women.  

In embracing our Constitution, we have replaced all unjust and inequitable legislation with laws and policy frameworks that place gender equality, equity and empowerment at the core of our transformation agenda.  

The last ten years have seen a substantial increase in women’s representation and influence in Government and all spheres of public life. In 2000, 19% of women were in management positions in the public sector, whereas today 28% of women constitute the management of the Public Service. 3  

Similarly, in 1999, 119 women were elected to the 400-seat National Assembly, whereas today there are now 131 women. Women therefore now make up 32.8% of the legislature, whilst in President Mbeki’s Cabinet they constitute 41%.4  

However, our achievements go well beyond representation to ensuring that the programmes we develop actually meet the specific needs of women. This becomes all the more important because women in our society continue to bear the brunt of unemployment, underdevelopment, illiteracy, illness and gender-based violence. Much of our work in this regard has therefore been directed at pushing back the frontiers of poverty, particularly for those of our women that live in rural communities and informal settlements.  

The Intelligence Services too have every reason to celebrate with the rest of our country during this our national women’s month. We are counted high amongst those institutions which have actively contributed to the gains that have been made over the last ten years.   

Gone are the days where the intelligence community was the preserve of men; where the predominant notion of a women intelligence officer was equated with that of a seductress, a Delilah sent to entrap Samson. No longer is a woman’s role in intelligence simply likened to that of the fabled Mata Hari, the Dutch femme fatal, who was executed in World War I, for betraying her French spymasters by passing on their state secrets to the Germans.  

Through our own deliberate efforts, we, like the women of 1956, have altered the course of history. We have made great advances in promoting gender equity so that women are able to claim their rightful place in our intelligence community.  Women now occupy key and strategic decision making posts in the Services. They are not relegated to the so-called soft skills or supportive roles,  but are active participants in our core operational functions. This impressive annual event bears testimony to this.  

Today, we do not only reflect on the awesome power of the collective action of the women of 1956, but we also uncover and create another voice, which has been silenced for so long, a rich history or should we rather use the term ‘herstory’5 of women in intelligence.  

Although in films and literature men in intelligence have great prominence, there are also several records, which highlight the heroic role of British, French, Dutch and Soviet women in the resistance to Nazi occupation.  

One particular film that made a deep impression on me was that of ‘Carve Her Name With Pride’, which told of the heroic deeds of an English woman, Violet Szabo, who was parachuted into Nazi occupied France. After carrying out, what were extremely dangerous operations, she was unfortunately caught, tortured and executed by the Nazis.  

We too must also give testimony to the role that South African women played in resistance to colonialism and in our struggle for freedom. We must preserve their rich experiences in our own films and literature so that their memory endures as part of our cultural heritage. We must ensure that we carve their names with pride.  

In doing so, let us recall Phila Ndwandwe, who was a young MK operative with intelligence duties, who was abducted from Swaziland in 1988. Phila was incarcerated on a farm near Pietermaritzburg, horribly tortured and when she refused to give in to her interrogators she was summarily executed.  

The views and perspectives of women, the ‘herstories’, must therefore form a central part of our endeavours in placing gender equity at the centre of the Services. They do not only enable us to challenge misconceptions, nor do they simply provide a critical platform for women to articulate their experiences and concerns. More importantly, they serve as a beacon; a reservoir of role models, whose valuable experiences, young women now entering the Services can draw from.  

We must not; however, only rely on events such as today to record them. I will therefore request the Intelligence Research Institute of the South African National Academy of Intelligence (SANAI), which is currently engaged in an exciting project, which aims to document the history of intelligence in our country, to ensure that they give a gender focus to their work in this regard.  

As I mentioned earlier, this gathering is not only about celebrating and learning from the past, our yesterday, neither is it only about reflecting on how far we have come today. I t is equally concerned with our tomorrow, our future, and the steps we still need to take to fulfill the immeasurable legacy of the women of 1956.  

While much has been achieved, so much still remains to be done. Despite our successes, the challenge s remain. Over the next decade we will need to work purposefully to further expand the opportunities that freedom has brought for the women of our Intelligence Services.  

President Mbeki, at the national women’s day celebration on Monday in Mpumalanga, called on us to:  

...further commit ourselves to accelerate the process we have started, of transforming South Africa from a male dominated society to a truly non-sexist, non-racial and democratic society...to move with the necessary speed to ensure that the totality of government do not merely pay lip service to gender equality…  

We therefore must use this opportunity to take stock and closely examine the challenges confronting our Services, so as to meet the President’s injunction.  

In this regard, while there has been a marked improvement in the participation of women in the Services, we have not gone far enough. Women now make up 41.32% of our members, with 27.02% occupying management positions. Despite the broad targets, which we have set for ourselves with respect to gender representivity, despite our policies to promote women participation, the fact is that men still predominate in our intelligence community, especially at upper management and operational levels.  

As the late OR Tambo, former President of the African National Congress and a true champion of women’s rights said:  

…if we are to engage our full potential in pursuit of revolutionary goals, then as revolutionaries, we should stop pretending that women in our movement have the same opportunities as men…6  

The same can be said of the Services and if we are serious about redressing these imbalances, we must therefore interrogate and address the impediments to their achievement. Chief amongst the challenges is the need to create an enabling working environment for women.  

In doing so, we cannot ignore the matter of sexual harassment. As part of our preparations towards this event, members of the Services were requested to highlight issues, which they felt we needed to address. A common theme emerging from the inputs received was the fact that despite our policy on sexual harassment, it remains an insidious poison in our midst.  

There can be no excuse, cultural or otherwise, for this form of unacceptable behaviour. We need to ensure that our men are educated and emancipated and that our women feel comfortable in speaking out and in reporting such matters. We need to stamp out sexual harassment in a most decisive manner.  

Another matter of concern identified was that of empowerment. It is not simply sufficient to increase the numbers of women at various levels of the Services, we also need to ensure that they are nurtured and supported in fulfilling their true potential.  

Again, while we have policies in place that are concerned with women empowerment, the fact is that we need to do so much more. We need to look at our training programmes for women and we need to value their work and contribution in the same way that we do with that of men. We must find creative ways to empower our female members to correct the imbalances of the past.  

The Directors General will be accountable for the steps they take over the coming period in heeding the President’s call to accelerate the process of gender transformation in the Services and in dealing with the challenges confronting us. They, in turn, will hold their managers, and indeed all of you, to account as well.  

We all jointly, both women and men, have a responsibility in this regard. As the heroic women of 1956 declared:  

…we shall teach the men that they cannot hope to liberate themselves from the evils of discrimination and prejudice as long as they fail to extend to women complete and unqualified equality in law and practice.7  

As men gathered here today, we stand humbled by the power of these words. We cannot expect the spirit of the Constitution, which frames all our efforts with respect to gender equity, to be realised without tremendous effort and purposeful action. We need to actively ensure that this spirit is internalised by all our people and our institutions. This is what the women of 1956 fought for, this is what our women deserve both today and in the future, not only because it is morally right, but because there can never be true democracy in our country without it.  

In closing, it has been said that a society’s development will be judged by the extent to which its women are emancipated. In the same way, if we are to develop our amakhangela to meet the challenges of the 21st century, then the success of our Intelligence Services will be measured by the extent to which our women are empowered to contribute to their fullest potential. This is something that we cannot do without!  

Igama lamaKhosikazi Malibongwe – let the name of women be praised and let their names be carved with pride.  

I thank you.