"I opened the road for you..."

The long and harsh struggle against apartheid in Southern Africa cannot be covered adequately in any short article. Since the ISIS Bulletin No. 9 which was entirely dedicated to women in Southern Africa, little has fundamentally changed for the women there. To remind ourselves of the incredible strength and courage of the black people there, we are including the following brief piece about just one of the women, Dora Tamana, taken from To Honour Women's Day published by the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1981 (see Resources for full details).

DORA TAMANA

"You who have no work, speak.

You who have no homes, speak.

You who have no schools, speak.

You who have to run like chickens from the vulture, speak.

Let us share our problems so that we can solve them together.

We must free ourselves.

Men and women must share housework.

Men and women must work together in the home and out in the world.

There are no creches and nursery schools for our children.

There are no homes for the aged.

There is no-one to care for the sick.

Women must unite to fight for these rights.

I opened the road for you.

You must go forward."

Dora Tamana, April 1981

The words of Dora Tamana provide a graphic insight into the growing strength and vitality of the liberation struggle in the 1980s. Nearly as old as the century, she was a powerful speaker at the inaugural conference of the Federation of South African Women in April 1954. 27 years later, at a conference of the United Women's Organization in Cape Town, attended by more than 400 delegates from the Western Cape, she was again calling on the women of South Africa to unite and mobilise. Through her, those present could look back at what was achieved in the past, and forward along the road of continuing struggle against apartheid.

   "Today, we still have our chains" she warned, "but we are not in a trap. We are divided, but we can come together... Now that we are strong, call the women, build the organization. Mothers, release yourselves." {Grassroots (Cape Town) May 1981).

Dora Tamana was born in 1901 at Gqamakwe in the Transkei. When she was 20, her father and two of her uncles were killed in the Bulhoek Massacre, in which 163 people were shot dead by the police.

In 1923, Dora married John Tamana, also from the Transkei. Over the next seven years she bore four children, three of whom died from starvation, tuberculosis and meningitis. The family moved to Cape Town in 1930 in the hope that their children might have a chance to survive. Dora's life continued to be a bleak struggle for basic essentials. Her husband eventually deserted her. She nevertheless became increasingly involved in the wider problems she saw around her, joining the African National Congress and the ANC Women's League, and becoming an energetic organizer in the African and Coloured townships.

During the Second World War, food became scarcer than ever. Various self-help groups sprang up in the townships, and Dora herself decided to set up a creche for 20 babies from six months to five years. She continued to be active in numerous campaigns during the early 1950s against high food prices, Bantu Education, removals and the pass laws, and in the Defiance Campaign.

Dora was sent as a delegate to the inaugural conference of the Federation of South African Women and spoke to the Women's Charter that was submitted to the conference. In 1955 she was invited with Lilian Ngoyi to attend a women's peace conference in Switzerland. Together they spent seven months touring Europe, the USSR, China and other socialist countries.

On her return to South Africa, Dora was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, and suffered constant police harassment for pass law and other "offences".

Dora brought up five of nine children who survived, ten grandchildren and ultimately a number of great-grandchildren. Through her family, she became personally involved in the armed struggle at an early stage. Her son Bothwell fought Rhodesian and South African troops in Zimbabwe as part of a joint campaign by the ANC and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). He was captured and spent 13 years in the Smith regime's maximum security prisons, only being released following Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.

During the years of UDI, Dora managed to make the hazardous journey to see him and other South African prisoners in jail. At first she travelled on a South African document. After 1976 she was told to apply for a Transkeian passport, and so was no longer able to visit her son. For to have done this would have implied recognition of the "independence" of the Transkei bantustan.

Dora continues to be actively involved in campaigns in the Cape Town area, against high rents and prices, poor housing, inadequate schools, amenities and health services, and other issues affecting the black community.