The Black Sash, February 1968
Standing vigil against the Group Areas Act 1956
(Shirley Singer, far right)
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
The Black Sash
The Black Sash
The history of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), African National Congress (ANC), South African Students' Organization (SASO), and the fight for liberation in South Africa is well known. Less well known is the organization called The Black Sash.
This organization of volunteers began in May 1955, when six white women
met to try to figure out what they could do to protest against the
Nationalist Party, the architects of Apartheid, which was making a mockery of the Constitution which had been created in 1909.
On the 25th May 1955, 2,500 women marched in Pretoria to protest. So
infuriated were these women, they drew up two petitions to be sent to
Parliament, to be signed by women only. Against all odds, delays, and
other obstacles, they gathered 100,000 signatures. In vain. Thus was
born a movement that would work assiduously, bearing Gandhi's principles
of non-violence in mind, to defeat Apartheid, to bear witness to
atrocities, to mourn the removal of rights and dignities, to provide
moral support and courage to those treated unjustly, to stand vigil
against the moral turpitude of the supporters of Apartheid. More often
than not, these women were pelted with eggs, tomatoes, and verbal abuse
as they stood silent, the least they could do in the face of the
violence being done to Non-White people and the trampling of democratic
principles.
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