Programme Director,
The family of Mama Getrude Shope, children and grandchildren,
President of the ANC Women’s League, Cde Sisisi Tolashe,
Members of the ANC National Executive Committee,
Members of the ANC Women’s League NEC,
Leadership of the Alliance and Mass Democratic Movement formations,
Comrades and Friends,
Fellow mourners,
We are here to bed farewell to Mama Gertrude Shope, Isithwalandwe, freedom fighter, trade unionist, icon of the women’s movement.
Her passing comes less than a week after we buried Cde Lungi Mngaga-Gcabashe, the Deputy President of the ANC Women’s League.
As we laid her to rest, we observed that in an African hut, there’s a pole that stands in the middle of the hut. It is called Intsika, or a pillar.
Women – our mothers, our grandmothers, our wives, our sisters, our aunts and our daughters – are izintsika. Like the pillar that holds the structure of the hut together, women hold up our homes, our families and the nation.
To have lost two women leaders – izintsika – in such close succession is a great loss. And yet, even amidst our grief we take comfort in the legacies they left behind.
We gather not just to remember the name Getrude Shope.
We gather to honour a life that helped to shape our country’s democracy.
Mama Getrude Shope’s life is and was intertwined in the fabric of our of democracy.
Her’s was a life that was quietly and unshakably committed to the struggle for our people’s liberation.
As we pay tribute to Mama Gertrude Shope, one of the outstanding matriarchs of our struggle, we should remember that she was a torchbearer for women’s emancipation.
We should remember her for her lifelong contribution to the struggle for freedom for all, especially for women silenced in the margins of apartheid oppression and patriachy.
She taught us that liberation without the liberation of women means that our revolution is unfinished. She also taught us that democracy without the voice of women is a fragile and partial democracy.
Today South Africa stands tall as a constitutional democracy that enshrines the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all.
We have stood firm in our conviction that the struggle for racial equality cannot be separated from the struggle for gender equality.
We have made significant progress in advancing women’s rights in education, health, social protection, political representation and economic participation.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report has called our country “a beacon of hope” in the quest for gender equality worldwide.
This progress was not achieved by chance.
Gertrude Shope and others made it happen. She birthed and mothered it. She nurtured it with discipline, wisdom and responsibility.
This progress is the result of deliberate policies implemented by successive democratic governments since 1994.
This progress is the result of a progressive Constitution and Bill of Rights that was forged in the trenches of struggle – a struggle waged by legions of brave women and men who dedicated their lives to seeing a South Africa that is non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous and free.
Ma Gertrude Shope was foremost among them.
At the age of 29, a time when many young people are still trying to find their feet in the world, she was already a revolutionary.
By her late twenties Ma Shope was a teacher by profession, having received her training in Zimbabwe, and was teaching domestic science at Pimville High in Soweto.
This brought her into direct contact with one of apartheid’s most insidious policies, Bantu Education.
To witness the dehumanising of black children in the classroom struck her to the core. She refused to accept the dictates of her role to impart inferior education that prepared black children for little more than a life of menial labour.
She joined the ANC and became involved in the campaign against Bantu Education in the early 1950s.
When the Congress of the People adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955, she personally took up its mantra that the doors of learning and culture shall be opened.
She took to heart the view expressed by Dr AB Xuma that education and political rights must go hand in hand with social justice and equality for all.
Ma Shope’s resistance to Bantu Education was a bold declaration that every African child was deserving of knowledge, respect and dignity.
She became involved in the women’s movement, joining the Federation of South African Women, FEDSAW.
A year before the Congress of the People in Kliptown, FEDSAW had adopted the Women’s Charter, setting out a vision of gender equality that found expression in the Freedom Charter itself.
In 1956, when more than 20 000 women marched on the seat of apartheid power to demand an end to the pass laws, Ma Shope was among the organisers.
She helped to mobilise women around the country, to inform them about the demands of the protestors and to arrange transport to Pretoria.
She belonged to a generation that took the baton from the pioneering work of women activists like Charlotte Maxeke, who once said: “This work is not for ourselves. Kill that spirit of self and do not live above your people, but with them.”
Ma Shope lived by this creed.
In its tribute to Ma Shope, COSATU reflected on the great personal sacrifice that commitment to the struggle entailed. She quit her teaching career, her source of income, as part of the campaign to boycott Bantu Education.
Abandoning one’s personal aspirations in pursuit of a greater cause is the very epitome of servant leadership.
There are arguably few amongst us who would today do the same. Such was this calibre of leadership, such was this level of commitment to one’s people and to the greater good.
Ma Shope’s activities soon drew the attention of the apartheid authorities. She made the decision to go into exile in 1966, where she would join her husband Mark who was active in the trade union movement and the ANC in exile.
While in exile, she worked tirelessly across Africa and abroad, mobilising support for the anti-apartheid cause.
She played a key role in drawing global attention to our struggle, including participating in the work of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid.
Just as international solidarity helped win us our freedom, just as Ma Shope taught us, we will continue our principled solidarity with peoples everywhere suffering oppression and persecution.
As the head of the ANC’s Women’s Section in exile and later as President of the ANC Women’s League, Ma Shope had a profound grasp of the realities facing women in South Africa.
She knew that the triple burden of oppression based on race, class and gender would not evaporate once apartheid ended.
In the early 1980s, Ma Shope gave an interview where she was asked why she thought it was important for women in the liberation movement to organise separately.
The interviewer asked if women were organising separately to revolt against men.
Ma Shope said:
“We are not declaring war on men. We know that the society we live in has made men think a certain way. So, men are also victims. Together, men and women must change their attitudes to each other.”
This statement is as relevant today as it was when Ma Shope spoke these words.
As president of the ANC Women’s League from 1991 to 1993, Ma Shope was instrumental in revitalising women’s voices within the democratic transition.
She worked to ensure that gender equity was embedded in the new South African Constitution, refusing to let women’s rights be treated as a secondary issue to national freedom.
Despite our progressive Constitution, despite South Africa having made considerable progress in advancing women’s rights, persistent inequalities threaten to undermine our advance as a society.
Women are still more likely to be poor than men. Women are still more likely to be unemployed than men. Women are the primary victims of intimate partner violence, abuse, rape and other forms of sexual violence.
Ma Shope’s life’s work is not yet complete.
It is up to us to take forward women’s struggles for full equality, for freedom from violence, and for the right to live in security, comfort and peace.
And like Ma Shope said all those years ago, this is not a struggle that must be waged by women alone.
Men must be at the frontlines of the fighter for gender equality. They must alongside their mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters.
The young women of the ANC Women’s League are the worthy inheritors of Ma Shope’s legacy.
We have seen the great work being done by the League to advocate for the rights of women and children and to empower them.
The women of South Africa have inherited the bravery, discipline and commitment of the generation that shook JG Strydom, the then Prime Minister of apartheid South Africa.
As we lay Ma Shope to rest, we renew our commitment to realising a South Africa in which women and girls enjoy true freedom.
Isithwalandwe Ma Shope served South Africa and her movement with distinction throughout her life.
Her unwavering commitment to women’s rights and her extraordinary leadership laid a firm basis for us to continue building a country that gives voice to the voiceless.
Her legacy lives on in the ANC, in the ANC Women’s League and in the Gertrude Shope Peacebuilding and Capacity Building Programme that was set up to support women peacemakers and conflict mediators on our continent.
We thank her for her service to South Africa and to the women of our country.
In the interview I spoke of earlier, Ma Shope was asked what message she had for the women of her country. To which she said:
“My message to women is that we should stand up for our rights. The time for women to be found in the kitchen is long past. Let us, together with our menfolk, correct the wrongs and ills of our society. This is the challenge facing us today. Join your organisation in your thousands, for without you there is no revolution.”
Ma Shope, as men and as women, we will indeed give effect to your clarion call.
We owe this to you and to the many women and men who gave their all for South Africa to be free.
Lala Ngoxolo Mbokodo,
Isithwalandwe-Seaparankwe.
I thank you.
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