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LILIAN NGOYI |
| Lilian Ngoyi belongs in a central way to a political, intellectual and social tradition which was founded by Charlotte Manye Maxeke in the early part of the twentieth-century: the tradition of placing and position women in a primary role in the making of political modernity in South Africa. Having been President of the Federation of South African Women, President of the African National Congress Women’s League, and elected to the Executive of the Garment Workers Union, all of these positions held simultaneously in the 1950s, it is not surprising that she had an enormous impact on three women who were to write major autobiographies in the 1980s and in the 1990s. Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Woman (1985), Maggie Resha’s ‘Mangoana o Tsoara Thipika ha Boha Bohaleng [My Life in the Struggle] (1991), and Phyllis Ntantala’s A Life’s Mosaic: The Autobiography (1993) directly and indirectly make references to the political and feminist tradition Lilian Ngoyi so eminently represented. Even before she led on August 9, 1956 together with Helen Joseph Amina Cachalia, and Sophie Williams, a march 20,000 women to the Union Building in Pretoria against the extension of pass laws to women, an event that would bring her on the national stage of South African politics, Lilian Ngoyi was already viewed and appreciated as a major historical figure, as can be seen from a political portrait of her written by Ezekiel Mphahlele in early 1956. Writing in the prestigious Masterpiece in Bronze series of a Drum magazine, which rarely had any portraits of women, Mphahlele made the following observation: “’She’s ambitious!’ ‘She’s a remarkable orator!’ ‘She knows too little about political theory!’ ‘She has a brilliant intellect!’ ‘What kind of woman is this?’ ‘She almost rocks men out of their pants!’ So say people about Mrs. Lilian Ngoyi, noe President of the ANC Women’s League for the second term-the most talked-of woman in politics. Who is Lilian Ngoyi? The woman factory worker who is tough granite on the outside, but soft and compassionate deep down in her. The woman who three years ago was hardly known in non-European politics. The woman whose rise to fame has been phenomenal. . . . As Vice-President of the South African Federation of Women, Mrs Ngoyi was the chosen delegate to the Lausanne conference of women in Switzerland last year. Together with another African woman, she visited several European countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Mrs Ngoyi is the first African woman to be on the Transvaal Provincial Executive of the ANC and on the National Executive. . . . Mrs. Ngoyi is a brilliant orator. She can toss an audience on her little finger, get men grunting with shame and a feeling of smallness, and infuse everyone with renewed courage. Her speech always teems with vivid figures of speech. Mrs. Ngoyi will say: ‘We don’t want men who wear skirts under her trousers. If they don’t want to act, let us women exchange garments with them.’ Or she will say: ‘We women are like hens that lay eggs for somebody to take away. That’s the effect of Bantu Education.’ At a recent anti-pass meeting one masculine firebrand advocated violence as a political solution. Mrs. Ngoyi replied: ‘Shed your own blood first and let’s see what stuff it’s made of.’ She denounced violence as stupid and impractical. The firebrand spluttered, flickered and sat down to smoulder, feeling embarrassed. Cuts and granite are required to lead and inspire the thousands of women who are everywhere resisting the extension of the pass system to women. The heat and pressure of the times have provided a Lilian Ngoyi to perform that function (“Lilian Ngoyi—The most talked-of woman in politics”, Drum, March 1956). It was of this profound commitment to the political present that Lilian Ngoyi had an everlasting impact and influence on the politics of national liberation. It was because of this, that on her death in 1980, the African National Congress then in exile, published a moving obituary in its ideological and political forum, the Sechaba magazine. The obituary was written by someone who had known her well in the social and political upheavals of the 1950s, Hilda Bernstein; “In the turbulent years of the 1950s two different forces combined to thrust Lilian Masediba Ngoyi, a hard-working widow, into the very heart of the liberation struggle in South Africa. Those two forces were the thrust of historical importance, and the power of Msa-Ngoyi’s personality. It was a potent combination, and it made Lilian Ngoyi the first woman to be elected to the National Executive of the African National Congress; and this year, two years after her death, the first woman to receive the highest award of the liberation movement: Isitwalandwe. To us the award nis recognition not only of a courageous woman, but also of the outstanding contribution made by women, particularly during the past three decades, to the liberation struggle at all levels. . . . For 18 years this brilliant and beautiful woman spent most of her time in a tiny house, silenced, struggling to earn money by doing sewing, and with her great energies totally suppressed. In a brief period between the expiry of one banning order and the arrival of another she was interviewed and gave a vivid account of her hardships, then rose to her feet and declared: ‘But my spirits have not been dampened. You can tell my friends all over the world that this girl is still her old self, if not more mature after all the experiences. I am looking forward to the day when my children will share in the wealth of our lovely South Africa.’ It was this fearless and defiant attitude that brought her new bans. She suffered heart trouble, and died at the age of 68. . . . Lilian Masediba Ngoyi remains always part of the black women’s struggle for human rights, part of the struggle of women everywhere, and part of the total struggle for a better life for all humanity. She was a unique woman whose life had great significance, and the recognition of this in the Isitwalande award gives us added pride in our movement---and in ourselves (“Lilian Masediba Ngoyi”, Sechaba, August 1982). An indication that the legacy of Lilian Ngoyi continues to the present, that is beyond the 1994 downfall of apartheid, is that a young woman reporter assessing the social and political commitments of two women members of the provincial Eastern Cape Legislature (Zanele Makina and Nomhle Mahlawe), felt the need to invoke the historical example of Lilian Ngoyi (“Two EC women MPLs powerful role models”, Keshina Thaver, East London Dispatch, August 9, 2000). A biography of this great woman would be one of the best ways to imprint permanently in our historical and political imagination her unsurpassable exemplary nature. Lilian Ngoyi’s position in South African political history is secure as we can glean from this passage from Nelson Mandela’s Victory Speech of May Fourth 1994: “I am personally indebted and pay tribute to some of South Africa’s greatest leaders including John Dube, Josiah Gumede, G. M. Naicker, Dr. Abdurahman, Chief Luthuli, Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Yusuf Dadoo, Moses Kotane, Chris Hani and Oliver Tambo. They should have been here to celebrate with us, for this is their achievement too.” In a week Nelson Mandela and the ANC democratically took over the South African government. This is the goal Lilian Masediba Ngoyi had been striving for throughout decades of revolutionary commitment. | |