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Izzy Maire

Keywords

apartheid, pass laws, women’s march, interracial friendship, South Africa

Abstract

In August 1956, thousands of South African women marched in front of the Union Building in Pretoria, South Africa. In their arms they carried petitions that demanded the abolishment of apartheid era pass laws, which required non-white South Africans to carry passbooks. The photo above depicted four women that lead this united legion of women. The white woman in this picture, Helen Joseph, commented on the racial identity of these leaders. She wrote, “Four women had been chosen as leaders for the day, Lillian Ngoyi, the African, Rahima Moosa, the Indian, Sophie Williams, the Coloured and I, the white.”1 As these women stand together in this photograph one might question what the relationships between them are like. Are they colleagues? Are they friends? Do they only march together, or do they spend additional time together? This march, like many other activities in the fight against apartheid, gave women from vastly different backgrounds the opportunity to work together towards a common cause. As these women worked together in the South African Liberation Movement, many of them created strong interracial friendships with other South African women and female activists, despite apartheid restrictions. Evidence of their relationships with one another can be found through their personal memoirs, correspondence, and interviews. These sources provide proof of ways they worked together, and supported and protected one another in the face of government suppression

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