Cosatu’s Zingiswa Losi says SA women must ‘define our own struggle’ against injustice

“Women in 1956 did not wake up and decide to march. It was well planned; they knew what the Struggle was about. At that time it was about pass laws. The rock that they had to crush at the time was the pass laws. We must define our own struggle now.”

These are the words of Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Zingiswa Losi at Daily Maverick’s The Gathering conference on Thursday, 28 August 2025. 

“The 1956 women’s struggle did not end then. We must define our own and we must pursue it,” she added. 

Losi was joined on stage by gender-based violence (GBV) researcher and advocate Lisa Vetten, and the former head of the Western Cape Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit Brigadier Sonja Harri, who has more than 30 years’ experience in public service.

The panel was moderated by Freedom Under Law executive officer and Daily Maverick columnist, Judith February. 

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Next year, South Africa will commemorate 70 years since the Women’s March of 1956, when an estimated 20,000 women descended on the Union Buildings in Pretoria with a petition demanding that the pass laws be abolished. 

The march took place on 9 August 1956. 

“Women then said: let us go to Pretoria ourselves, and protest to the government against the laws that oppress us,” said February. “That protest against the pass laws marked a turning point in the Struggle for all of our freedom.

“Of course, it was there that the phrase ‘You strike [a] woman, you strike [a] rock became famous and part of our national fabric.” 

Harri said that the “bravery” of the women who were part of the March of 1956 helped contribute to some of the freedom that women in South Africa experience today. 

“Those women were extremely courageous in how they did it, [and] in what they did… They knew what the law was at the time… They knew what the difficulties would be — there might be arrests, there might be assaults on them. But, they did it to have the pass laws abolished. 

“They gave us a lot of courage. So I’m forever grateful to those ladies,” said Harri. 

‘There’s been a betrayal of the promise’

Speaking to the audience nearly 70 years after the 1956 March, Vetten said “it feels like we haven’t made any progress”. 

“And, in some respects we have gone back in relation to women’s rights, and it’s almost as if  we need a new kind of vocabulary and way of thinking about the kinds of violence that women experience,” said Vetten. 

February added: “There’s been a betrayal of the promise.”

Read more: ‘ANC leadership is not taking advice when it is given to them’ — 1956 march leader Sophia de Bruyn

Earlier this year, Losi was among the delegation of officials who travelled with President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House to meet with US President Donald Trump. 

When Ramaphosa gave Losi a chance to speak, she delivered a firm rebuttal to Trump’s lies about land expropriation in South Africa and violence against white farmers, making the point that South Africa did not have a race issue, but a crime issue, Daily Maverick reported. 

She highlighted, instead, that South Africa’s crime issue was disproportionately affecting women and people of colour. 

At The Gathering, Losi said we don’t need another National Dialogue in South Africa.

“We are having dialogues every day in South Africa. The problem that we have is the implementation of systems in place. We need to have systems that cannot be corrupted,” she said. 

She concurred with Vetten who said that allocating adequate budgets, administering our systems properly, and capacitating our institutions was needed to improve the justice system. DM