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Afrique du Sud : NUMSA supports ANC WL Mini-Skirts march against Women Abuse !

D 27 février 2012     H 06:06     A NUMSA     C 0 messages


The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) in Jack Charles Bezuindehout Region (formerly Wits Central) fully supports the ANC Women’s League’s (ANCWL) organised march on mini-skirts taking place tomorrow Friday 17 February 2012.

The ANCWL march on mini-skirts should not be de-linked from the broader class struggles to defeat Capitalism, because Capitalism as a system is inherently immoral, sexist and reduces women into cheap sexual commodities for men’s pleasure or satisfaction.

This ANCWL march should also be about intensification of our struggle for the nationalisation and socialization of the means of production, the total ban of labour brokers, including casualisation of labour, the creation of decent jobs, provision of free, quality public education and a New Growth Path that is not embedded in the failed neo-liberal and market fundamentalism, in order to reverse the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and deepening inequalities which has placed working class and poor women at the receiving end of Capitalist brutality.

The past backward, chauvinistic attacks on women wearing mini-skirts in our country’s taxi ranks, especially in Noord Taxi Rank, highlights the deep-seated and embedded sexism and rottenness of our society as personified by some taxi landlords and drivers.

The right of women to freedom of movement, freedom from sexual harassment and the right to dignity in our society can never be determined by the clothes that a woman chooses to wear. The continuous harassment of women because of what they wear borders on societal patriarchy and relegates women into cheap sexual commodities as fostered and entrenched by the immoral and barbaric Capitalist system.

We fully support this march as public transport users to register our total rejection of harassment or abuse meted against our mothers, daughters or sisters based on the clothes they choose to wear, but also most importantly against the derogatory utterances spewed or directed towards gays and lesbians by some of the rotten social scum in our society, located in the taxi industry.

This march by the ANCWL should also be about re-claiming taxi ranks as public places, as opposed to havens representing the patriarchal and chauvinistic tendencies shared by some powerful individuals within our society.

As NUMSA we fully support the ANCWL in its struggles without contradicting our ideological clarity or posture. We call on working class women and the youth in general to join en masse this march as led by the ANCWL.