The Bertha behind the Bill that changed women’s lives

JORDAN MOSHE

It was a Jewish woman by the name of Bertha Solomon who fought to change this law, and after a long hard fight, ultimately succeeded. Solomon was one of the first women’s-rights activists in the country, whose fight for women to be treated equally remains legendary to this day.

Solomon championed women’s rights in the 1930 and 1940s as an advocate in the Supreme Court, and then in her long career in parliament. She was tireless in her fight to see the Matrimonial Affairs Bill (commonly known as Bertha’s Bill) passed to secure women’s legal rights to their property, income, and children.

Solomon was born in Minsk (then a part of Russia, now Belarus) in 1892. She was one of five children born to Idel and Sonia Schwartz. Together with her mother and an older sister, she arrived in South Africa in 1896 to join her father, a staunch Zionist who had left Tsarist Russia to escape conscription.

Her father’s commitment to noble causes clearly left a mark on his daughter. Solomon’s first-class results won her a scholarship to the Anglican Diocesan College (Bishops) as its only Jewish student.

She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in classics, a post-graduate teachers’ qualification, and a Masters in classics. After qualifying as a teacher, she taught Latin at Milburn House School for Girls in Cape Town for a year. During that time, she met her future husband, Charles Solomon. They were married in 1913, and settled in Johannesburg, where their two children, Frank and Joan, were born.

It was in 1923 that the trajectory of her life shifted dramatically. As a wife and the mother of two children, she reportedly complained over dinner to her friend, Advocate Philip Millin, that she was bored.

According to Gwynne Robins, the deputy director of the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies, who has conducted research into Solomons’ background, “[Millin] suggested that as a law had just been passed allowing women to practice law, she should study law, and he sent her books and newly qualified lawyers to coach her.

“In due course, as Advocate Bertha Solomon, she became one of the first women advocates in practice, and loved the work.”

Robins said most of Solomon’s clients were women, and she was horrified to discover their legal disabilities. This was as a result of the Roman Dutch Common Law of Marriage, which regarded women as minors, and gave their husbands marital power over their wives’ money, possessions, and children.

“Feckless husbands could spend the wife’s inheritance, collect her wages, sell her possessions and furniture, remove the children, and nothing could be done,” said Robins. “Bertha realised that the only way to address these legal disabilities was to change the law.”

However, this required ground-breaking change: giving women the vote so their opinions could influence legislators.

Solomon joined the National Council of Women, threw herself into the suffrage movement, and became chairperson of the women’s suffrage campaign. She faced stiff opposition from the Dutch Reformed Church, which opposed votes for women on the basis that that their enfranchisement was “in direct conflict with the word of G-d”.

In 1930, after a heated Parliamentary debate in which it was argued that scientific evidence proved women had smaller brains, only white women were given the vote, and were compelled to register as voters.

It caused an outcry. Ruth Alexander, the wife of MP Morris Alexander, stated that she refused to register under the force of a discriminatory law. “When Morris [her husband] told her she could be arrested for non-compliance, she agreed to register under compulsion and on the understanding that she would leave him as soon as their children had finished university – and she did,” says Robins.

Now able to vote, Solomon was elected first as a member of the provincial council in 1933, and later a member of parliament, addressing women’s rights in her maiden speech. She set out to improve women’s rights in terms of the law.

Unfortunately, World War II broke out at this point, and shelved her Bill. Concern about the rights of women was low on the government’s priorities, particularly with the opposition of the Dutch Reformed Church, and a government divided about South Africa’s entry into the war.

Throughout the war, however, Solomon continued to wage a battle on behalf of women “It was an uphill battle,” says Robins. “General Smuts quipped, ‘What this house needs is more Bertha control’.” In 1944, she managed to get a bill through parliament only to have it rejected by the senate.

Solomon asked Prime Minister Jan Smuts to establish a judicial commission to investigate the position of women in South Africa. The findings were horrifying. Even the commission’s chairman, who had initially been opposed to such a bill, changed his view.

Solomons experienced yet another setback. By the time the commission presented its findings, the conservative National Party had come to power, and it was more interested in legislating apartheid than antagonising the church.

Eventually in 1953, Solomon’s 27-year battle bore fruit, and the Matrimonial Affairs Act, (called Bertha’s Bill by Prime Minister DF Malan), was passed, giving women legal rights to their property, income, and children.

“Having finally achieved the law she set out to achieve 27 years earlier, she retired from parliament five years later,” said Robins.

The battle in Parliament to secure equal rights for women in all areas of South African life was not yet over, however. Until her retirement in 1958, Solomon continued to act as a parliamentary watchdog for women’s rights, and to take government to task when those rights were ignored.

She passed away in 1969 at the age of 77, but her victory on behalf of South African women will ensure that she is never forgotten.