In South Africa, August is observed as Women’s Month. The annual commemoration is inspired by the march in 1956 of 20 000 women, to the Union Buildings, the seat of government in Pretoria, to hand over a petition of many thousands of signatures protesting the imposition of the hated ‘pass books’ on women.

It is a narrative of resilience, courage and resistance to policies and a social environment that diminished people, dishonoured their dignity and dehumanised them through pernicious, discriminatory laws.

They protested then the burden that today falls grimly on mobile women across the world and particularly in southern Africa. Now, as in 1956, the narrative of women in the mobile community is also one of courage, resilience and resistance.

Paper by CPLO