Silent protest better than burning schools

Geoff Sifrin

Taking Issue

On Monday we saw an unforgettable example of the latter, when four brave young women rose to stand silently with handwritten posters decrying rape in front of President Jacob Zuma as he addressed a large gathering of dignitaries in Pretoria at the official announcement of the municipal election results. The nation owes these women a resounding “thank you”.

Their action took place just two days prior to Women’s Day, which commemorates the 20 000 women who marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on August 9, 1956, objecting to the pass laws for blacks. The two events are in the same spirit.

Monday’s four women protesters were highlighting South Africa’s rape culture – a pandemic ranked as one of the highest in the world. One of the placards suggested that one in three women will be rape victims.

Their action took the gathering so totally by surprise that no-one stopped them – even Zuma’s bodyguards – until his speech was over. The senior official of the electoral commission who apologised to the audience after Zuma had finished talking and security personnel had hustled the women away sounded extremely embarrassed. But their protest had already had its effect, and it was profound. In a different political reality he might have actually praised them for truth-telling.

Their action took place 10 years after Zuma’s own rape trial, in which he was ultimately found not guilty, but which left negative feelings about his approach to women’s rights and his problematic sexual attitudes. The protesters were not only drawing attention to his own case, but the prevalence of gender-based violence in this country.

Zuma’s legacy will forever be symbolised by Monday’s dramatic visual image of a disgraced male president mouthing political platitudes behind four bright young women standing still and silent with their placards. He was oblivious to the potent words on their posters.

Their action was similar in impact to the white women of the non-violent Black Sash organisation, who for many years during apartheid stood silently with placards at the sides of the roads and in other public places, protesting apartheid laws and embarrassing the government at every opportunity. Their striking black sashes were worn as a mark of mourning and to protest against unjust racist legislation.

They broke no laws by their demonstration, however, and their “privileged” status as whites protected them – the government fumed but could do nothing to stop them. Many Jewish women participated in the Black Sash vigils, aside from others who acted directly to alleviate black suffering – like those in the Union of Jewish Women and Operation Hunger.

One of the most famous historical examples of such “passive” action is Rosa Parks, the black woman in the United States who in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, defied a bus driver’s order to give up her seat in the coloured section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Her non-violent resistance became a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement.

We have seen many examples recently of South Africans resorting to violence to make their voices heard – burning buildings, buses and schools, and killing people. The four women who stood silently in front of Zuma with their placards showed there is a more constructive way.

Perhaps the Black Sash needs to be revived in another, post-apartheid form – a non-violent people’s movement which will say “no” to the shenanigans of this country’s current leaders and demand a better way.