"We look to South Africa to once again inspire the world with your courage and conviction. To help us make gender apartheid a crime. To show that, as you remember those who sacrificed for your freedom, you will also stand with your Afghan sisters who are suffering today."
His Excellency President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa,
Speaker of National Parliament,
Distinguished Ministers and Deputy Ministers present,
Premier of Gauteng,
Senior officials,
Mme Sophie Williams - De Bruyn and other women stalwarts and leaders,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and gentlemen
Thank you for inviting me to be here today. I am so honored to join you in celebrating this historic moment in South Africa’s history — the 70th anniversary of the Women’s March, when 20,000 brave women took to the streets to protest apartheid and demand equal education, pay and rights. It took incredible courage to speak out in 1956, four decades before the end of apartheid. And the risks were greatest for Black South African women — as they still are today — who faced not only the racial discrimination of apartheid, but the added burdens of being women in a patriarchal society. Yet they chose to lead and demanded to be seen.
It is their legacy of courage that brings me back to South Africa today. This is my second trip to your beautiful country — and I am joined on this visit by advocates for girls’ education and campaigners for women’s rights in Afghanistan.
We have come not only to mark this historic anniversary, but to learn from you. From elders like my friend Madame Sophie, we want to understand how South Africans organized — and how you endured — generation after generation, until the world had no choice but to listen.
From your legal experts, we have heard how discrimination was codified in law under apartheid — and how international law and global pressure helped dismantle it. Yesterday, we met with high school students to learn how they are carrying South Africa’s legacy forward, taking action on the challenges shaping their young lives.
South Africa has inspired movements around the world — from the fight for independence and liberation across Africa to the Palestinian people’s ongoing pursuit of dignity, justice and freedom from Israel’s genocide.
You inspired my own fight as a child in Pakistan. When the Taliban took over our town and forced girls out of school, I spoke against them. And, for that, they tried to kill me. In those dark times, I took comfort in reading about Nelson Mandela, how his courage outlasted those who tried to silence him.
In the years since then, I have learned that the anti-apartheid movement was so much more than one man or one moment — it was decades of people working together across South Africa — men and women, lawyers and journalists, mineworkers and priests. It was also support from students, athletes, artists and citizens around the world, who refused to profit from injustice, and governments who sent aid and imposed sanctions on the apartheid regime.
We have come to honor your heroes, to learn from your movement…and to ask for your solidarity in our own fight against oppression. Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, they have controlled courts, the police and public institutions — and they have used this power to abuse women and girls.
Today in Afghanistan, girls are not allowed to attend school past sixth grade. Women — who just five years ago were doctors, politicians, engineers and artists — are not allowed to go to university or pursue a career. For women, even speaking in public is a crime.
For those who defy the Taliban orders, there is punishment — beatings, imprisonment and death. A few days ago, I visited Constitution Hill to honor the sacrifice of Albertina Sisulu, Lilian Ngoyi and every South African woman imprisoned for defying unjust laws. Our group stood in silence to remember Victoria Mxenge, Ruth First and those who gave their lives for freedom. In that moment, I thought of Afghanistan — a place where women are sent to prison for the same defiance we honor here today.
Last year, your government declared gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster in South Africa and introduced programs and legislation to combat it. This year, the Taliban declared it legal for a man to beat his wife or daughter.
For five years, the Taliban have been erasing women and girls from public life, excusing these abuses under the banners of “culture” and “religion.”
This is not culture. It is not religion. It is a system of segregation and domination.
We must call the Taliban regime by the name Afghan women have given it, by its true name: gender apartheid.
On the 9th of August, 1956, the women who marched in this country carried a petition. Along with their list of demands, it said this: “An insult to African women is an insult to all women.” That is exactly the solidarity we seek for Afghan women and girls. We look to South Africa to once again inspire the world with your courage and conviction. To help us make gender apartheid a crime. To show that, as you remember those who sacrificed for your freedom, you will also stand with your Afghan sisters who are suffering today.
With South Africa by our side, I believe we will see a day like this one in Afghanistan… a day when silence is no longer the price of survival, when women’s voices can be heard on the street, in the classroom and in government, when one generation’s fight becomes the next generation’s freedom.
Thank you.
