Among heart-felt singing and a colorful display of traditional costumes, these pictures were taken at South African Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA) march in Pretoria in November 2015. Rural women from the nine provinces of the country got together for a vigil and story telling in Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg and the next day marched to the Union Buildings demanding land and water for food. Land distribution in South Africa has for long been an issue. The processes of colonialism and Apartheid have left rural women particularly excluded. In a context where women suffer a triple discrimination in terms of class, ethnicity and gender, the result is result is a great difficulty for them to accessing stable and secure employment in the rural areas. In this, access to land becomes a question of resilience and survival. The issue of land gains greater urgency in the face of threats of eviction, particularly for farmwomen living in company-owned farm housing and in informal settlements. In this march, demands centered around access to land and water for rural women to grow food and fight food insecurity. The slogan “One Woman One Hectare” resonated strong among vibrating struggle and revolution songs in as women made their way to the Union Buildings. Today South African rural women are still struggling for land as the government has failed in passing a land reform that recognizes their needs.
Text by Fabienne Bondu, antropologist
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