Seventy years after South Africa’s women’s march, the struggle is not over As Sophie Williams de Bruyn stood on the grounds where she led thousands of women in a historic march 70 years ago, her words cast a somber tone over this year's National Women's Day commemorations.
The country around her had changed: apartheid was dismantled, and democracy brought new freedoms. Yet for many women, those gains remain elusive.
The pass laws that Williams de Bruyn and her fellow protesters challenged in 1956 were one of the many instruments of racial control under apartheid.