I have been flooded with invites for Women’s Day celebrations, from high teas and picnics to Women’s Day runs and dinners and lunches, all in the name of commemorating the significance of Women’s Day in South Africa.

I began having conversations with friends and women who have crossed my path about Women’s Day since invitations came flooding in. I was taken aback by how different our perspectives were on why the day deserves any recognition to begin with. Some saw no significance at all. “We already have Freedom Day,” sighed one.

My late mother was 10 years old in 1956 and, every year, she would tell reflective stories about why this day was so significant for her. She would encourage me to reflect in reverence and never to take the day for granted.

These tales would often leave me perplexed because at 10, she couldn’t have been with the women who marched to the Union Buildings in protest against apartheid laws. I would, however, respectfully sit and listen to her hopes for me to always remember and revere the women we celebrate on this day.

I’d observe that she wished she had been old enough to take part in the march and her lived experience with apartheid and the resultant “freedom” much to do with why this day meant so much to her. I was born 30 years later, so you can imagine my struggle trying to resonate with the same feelings every year.

Attaining freedom was the biggest challenge for my mother’s generation, and my generation has not been spared its own challenges. We are wrestling with what I believe is the biggest challenge of our time: corruption.

For more than a decade now I have been longing for an invitation to a Women’s Day march that will call out: “Enough is enough! Women in South Africa are saying enough with corruption”, so I would have the privilege of realising my dream of birthing freedom from corruption for my generation and, like my mother, one day tell tales of courageous women who will be revered by generations to come. 

As a researcher and advocate of anti-corruption in Africa, I know all too well how women bear the biggest burden when it comes to corruption. Not only does the corruption pandemic threaten their economic wellbeing, but it also violates their personal dignity and basic rights.

Yes, corruption can be gender specific and be as pervasive as other types of oppression, if not worse. The biggest threat facing women in South Africa today is that we are unknowingly victims of gender-specific types of corruption that remain lurking in the shadows of a neglected crime, with no prospects of being reported nor prosecuted.  

This Women’s Day, may the same courage that our foremothers had in facing the challenges of their time head-on fall on the women of my generation. It is worth us taking the risk. DM