Rita Ndzanga demonstrated that ordinary people together can do extraordinary things. It’s our turn now, writes Ms_ZamaNdlovu.
, or Gogo to me, lives in a modest house on vibrant Koma Street in Soweto. On the far end of Koma Street, you’ll find Moroka Police Station where Gogo would report every Monday from August 1964 after she and her husband Lawrence Ndzanga were banned by the apartheid government.
Ma Rita was 33 years old when she and her husband were arrested from their Soweto home in front of their three small children. She was one of the seven women who were among the 22 accused inin 1969. Despite the acquittal, she spent months in prison, where her hair was pulled out and she was beaten until she fell on bricks or hit a gas pipe, or she was kept in solitary confinement.
There is so much more to commemorate and to remember about the significance of Women’s Day.
The report further shows that women are more likely to be employed in low-wage, service-sector jobs in private households, or in community and social services. These are sectors in which the pandemic has shown to be least secure for workers. White men account for less than 6% of people employed in the formal private sector, but account for more than 30% of senior managers in the formal private sector.
It is Ma Rita’s ordinariness that makes her story of resistance so extraordinary. Ma Rita is an ordinary African grandmother, who never leaves the house without a blanket, who loves her dogs, who is protective of her things, who loves her grandchildren.
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