On 9 August 1956, in an act inspired by decisive female leadership, about 20,000 women from all over South Africa marched peacefully to the Union Buildings. Female leaders from FEDSAW, the Federation of South African Women, and others organised this protest to oppose the issuing of apartheid-era passbooks to women, which would severely limit their movements.
This peaceful march was a pivotal moment in South African history, as it showed that women were not passive observers but influential leaders. While it took many more years of hard work and sacrifice to abolish apartheid, this march showed the incredible power of female leadership in mobilising resistance to oppression and achieving shared goals.
Strong female leadership often focuses on rectifying inequality, but we can also channel it towards better leadership in everyday life. In this post, we’ll discuss what we can learn from the inspirational female leaders who organised the 1956 Women’s March and how we can apply their legacy in our own lives today.
What we can learn from the 1956 Women’s March leaders
Many women helped organise the 1956 Women’s March. However, a few stand-out leaders made this protest memorable, highlighting women’s ability to unite peacefully and drive change.
Some of the march’s most prominent leaders included Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi, Fatima Meer, Rahima Moosa, and Sophie Williams-De Bruyn.
To understand what we can learn from these women, let’s examine some of the skills they would have had to organise an event at this scale:
Communication skills
The 1956 Women’s March could only have happened with optimal communication skills. In the 1950s, there were no cellphones, internet, or even television in South Africa, so FEDSAW leaders would have had to travel all over the country to engage with women from different backgrounds and encourage them to join the march.
Cross-cultural communication would also have been very important. Although actively discouraged at the time, leaders overcame these challenges through practical organisational and communication skills, such as listening and empathy, and building solid relationships.
Interestingly, one of the main communication tools during this time was protest posters, which would have also required good written and visual communication skills.
Counselling skills
Although these inspirational women weren’t necessarily counsellors, they would have required some helping skills to engage with women from different backgrounds and listen to their stories of hardship.
Counselling skills like building rapport and asking questions would have been critical in mobilising support from women struggling with issues like poverty and disenfranchisement during a complex and sensitive time in our country’s history.
Management skills
Organising a march of about 20,000 women would have required supreme management skills, both in terms of people and tasks. While the first step would have been to inspire women to attend, the next would have involved practical skills like printing out petition forms to sign, arranging the logistics of thousands of women meeting and walking to the same place, and ensuring a quiet but powerful level of decorum.
It would have been easy for the protest to become heated during such a difficult time. However, managerial finesse was evident in how noticeably peaceful and organised it was. The women leading the way would also have imparted this ethos through their vision and intentions.
Recruitment skills
While inspiring female leadership played a massive role in organising the protest, they would have had to rely on many other women to make it happen, too. Apart from FEDSAW leaders and members, everyday women also made the march happen.
Therefore, these women embodied excellent communication, counselling, and management skills. They knew how to recruit the right people to the cause and build a shared vision that all women, regardless of their background, could ascribe to.
How do we learn female leadership skills?
Considering what it would have taken to organise this event, it’s humbling to think these women achieved this milestone without modern communication technologies. In such a turbulent time, it’s also impressive that all these women could stand together in silence for half an hour before leaving the Union Buildings. The message was a powerful one.
While this event was very political, these skills can also apply to everyday life when running businesses, families and our own lives. We don’t need to organise marches to be effective female leaders, but we can be inspired by these historical figures and learn from what they did.
At SACAP Global, we want to empower everyone. However, as an organisation composed mainly of women, we are passionate about inspiring female leadership.
If you want to hone your leadership skills, we offer several online micro-credential courses to help you broaden your skillset and become a more effective leader.
These courses include the following:
- Advanced Interpersonal Communication
- Fundamental Counselling Skills
- Intro to Management and Leadership
- How to Recruit and Retain Top Talent
If you’d like to learn more about what else we offer, browse our course list.