Speeches

Keynote Address by the Hon Andries Nel, MP, Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development at 70th Commemoration of the 1956 Women's March and the 30th Anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, held at the Women's Jail, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, 31 August 2026

Programme Facilitator, Mr. Irfaan Mangera;

The CEO of Constitution Hill, Ms Leah Mabusela;

The Acting Chairperson of the Commission for Gender Equality, Mr Mfundo Nomvungu;

The Co-Chairperson of the National Task Team on SOGIESC Matters, Sibonelo Ncanana-Trower;

Representing the Legal Practice Council, Adv Greta Engelbrecht, SC;

The Head of Research of WeThePeopleSA, Ms Sandra Mujeni;

Ms Busisiwe Nxumalo from the National Youth Development Agency;

Ms Tshidiso Lencoasa from Section 27;

Members of the legal profession and justice sector;

Members of civil society,

Members of the media,

Distinguished guests,

And, most importantly, the resilient women, activists, and defenders of human rights gathered here today.

Good morning. Dumelang. Molweni. Goeie môre.

It is an immense honour to stand before you today in this sacred space.

We are gathered at the historic Women's Jail here at Constitution Hill.

The venue was not chosen at random.

It was deliberately chosen for what is symbolises and the story it tells.

This is a place where the bricks and mortar themselves bear witness not only to the cruelty of our past, but also to the unyielding triumph of the human spirit.

As we look around this venue, we must recognize that there is a profound, poetic weight in the geography of South African liberation.

Prominent struggle activists like Barbara Hogan, Fatima Meer, Albertina Sisulu and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela were all incarcerated at the Women's Jail during their political careers.

Fatima Meer created a number of paintings and drawings in secret during her imprisonment to show the conditions under which they were detained.

The jail itself was built in 1910, eight years after the black men's prison was established.  It housed both black and white women, though separately.

Its inmates were both political prisoners and prisoners who had committed other crimes.

Many black women were arrested for transgressing pass laws. The State of Emergency in 1960 saw another influx of female prisoners, many of whom were arrested with their children, some of whom were still infants.

Women faced multiple indignities at the Women's Jail. They were not supplied with underwear or sanitary products, only until after the 1976 Soweto Uprising when women and teenage girls were held at the jail without trial for what was termed indefinite preventative detention.

They had to use communal outdoor showers which, even in winter, had only cold water, and which were visible from the surrounding office blocks.

 

The Women's March of 1956

Seventy years ago, in on 9 August 1956, 20 000 brave women of all races marched peacefully to the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

It is the 70th anniversary of that March that we commemorate this year.

They faced an uphill struggle – both literally and figuratively.

They did not march on a flat, easy plain.

They marched upward, ascending the steep incline of Meintjieskop to the Union Buildings to deliver a petition to the doorstep of a brutal apartheid regime.

Today, we find ourselves on another hill - Constitution Hill.

This parallel is not a mere coincidence of urban planning; it is a historical reminder.

Going up a hill requires physical exertion. It requires defying gravity.

It demands that you lean forward, bear the weight of the collective, and refuse to step backward.

The hills of our history remind us that the journey toward true freedom, absolute equality, and justice is always an uphill battle.

It is an arduous, non-stop climb against the steep slopes of patriarchy, racism, and institutionalized oppression.

 

The global tide of regression

As we look out from the vantage point of this hill today, in August 2026, we must confront a sobering reality that stretches far beyond our borders.

The global landscape is shifting beneath our feet, and it is shifting in a terrifying direction.  Across the world, we are witnessing a coordinated, systemic, and aggressive pushback against human rights, gender equality, and fundamental democratic values.

Let us not speak of this global regression in abstract terms.

We are seeing practical, devastating examples of this rollback across every hemisphere.

We see it in the stripping of basic human rights.

There are extreme manifestations of this pushback, such as instances where women and girls have been systematically erased from public life, banned from secondary and tertiary education, and stripped of the right to work or travel freely.

We see it in the erasure of healthcare and bodily autonomy. In the United States, the overturning of Roe v. Wade stripped away a half-century of reproductive rights.

The US has also withdrawn from over 60 key multilateral international organizations, 31 of which are aligned with the United Nations, including the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women – or as we all know it by its shortened name, UN Women.

Federal policy shifts have narrowed the legal definition of sex to a rigid biological binary, impacting on protections for transgender and nonbinary individuals, such as altered identification policies and the withdrawal of the "X" gender marker option which was previously available to non-binary and transgender persons.

Similarly, some countries have implemented near-total bans on the safe termination of pregnancy, thus endangering women's health and/or criminalizing medical choices.

We also see consistent attacks on LGBTQIA+ communities. In parts of the world we are witnessing strong anti-LGBTQIA developments, weaponized by populist politicians for narrow political gain.

According to the Human Dignity Trust, 12 countries have jurisdictions in which the death penalty is imposed or at least a possibility for private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.

This is a global regression.

It is a modern-day counter-march trying to force humanity back down the mountains of progress that we have spent centuries climbing.

There is a dangerous, creeping rhetoric globally that suggests human rights are a luxury we can no longer afford, or that equality is being taken too far.

These developments show that even long-standing constitutional protections can be dismantled if society lowers its guard.

 

The 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution

It is against this dark, turbulent global backdrop that we mark an extraordinary milestone: the 30th anniversary of the adoption of our 1996 Constitution.

When we drafted and adopted this text three decades ago, South Africa did something deeply and truly revolutionary.

In a world that was still profoundly conservative, South Africa became the first country to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation within its Constitution.

We legislated for gender equality and human dignity not as minor amendments or afterthoughts or "nice-to-haves", but as foundational pillars of our democratic state.

Our Constitution was written to be a living document - a transformative tool meant to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice, and fundamental human rights.

But as we look at the global landscape today, we see that Constitutions and human rights are only as strong as the people who protect and uphold them.

The international regression we are witnessing proves that no right is self-sustaining.

The laws that protect our LGBTQIA+ communities, that guarantee reproductive freedom, and that mandate gender equality are only as permanent as our willingness to fight for them today.

South Africa is not immune to these global winds of reaction.

While we have made magnificent constitutional strides, we must honestly acknowledge that we cannot look at our progressive legal framework and naively assume the summit of the hill has been reached.

When women in South Africa still experience shockingly high levels of gender-based violence and femicide, the climb is far from over.

When women face disproportionate rates of poverty, structural unemployment, and stubborn patriarchy in the workplace, we are still fighting a steep incline.

When the LGBTQIA+ community face discrimination, prejudice, hate speech and hate crimes, despite having the progressive laws we have, we are in danger of moving backwards rather than forwards.

We need to say it loudly and clearly - We will not allow our gains to be stripped away.

We will not allow the clock to be turned back.

To compromise on human rights anywhere is to jeopardize human rights everywhere.

 

Working together - Government and Civil Society

How do we resist this gravity? How do we ensure we do not slide backward down the hill?

The answer lies in the very fabric of how this event was put together: through collaboration.

I want to speak directly to the relationship between the democratic state and civil society.

History has taught us that government alone cannot protect human rights, and civil society alone cannot institutionalize them. We need each other.

The advancement of human rights in South Africa requires a vibrant, critical, and well-resourced civil society working in partnership with a responsive, capable, and accountable government and with institutions such as our Chapter 9 bodies.

Civil society organizations - like those represented here today - are the early warning systems of our democracy.

It is through the work of organisations such as Constitution Hill Trust, OUT LGBT Well-Being and WeThePeopleSA that human rights find expression in everyday life.

You are on the ground in communities, in rural areas, and in informal settlements.

You are the ones who flag the gaps where public services fail the vulnerable.

You hold the mirror up to government, forcing us to confront uncomfortable realities when our implementation falls short of our constitutional promises.

Government, on the other hand, possesses the legislative machinery, the institutional scale, and the public mandate to turn human rights principles into systemic, enforceable realities.

When we work together, we create an unbreakable alliance.

We see this synergy in the work on, amongst others, the National Strategic Plan on GBVF.  We see it in the work being done by structures such as the National Task team which promotes and protects the rights of LGBTQIA+ persons.

But we must do more than just co-exist; we must actively deepen this partnership.

Government must view civil society not as an adversary, but as an indispensable partner in transformation.

Civil society must continue to push us, to innovate with us, and to help us bridge the gap between legal rights and real-world access to justice.

When we build walls between state institutions and the public, we create a vacuum.

And history shows that when a vacuum appears, conservative, anti-human rights forces will rush to fill it.

Our partnership is the safety rope that binds us together on this mountain climb.  

If one slips, the other holds the line.

 

Defend, consolidate and advance

Therefore, as we stand on this historic hill, looking out at a world in flux, our collective mandate is crystal clear.

We cannot merely hold the line. One cannot always play on the defence.

To survive a global regression, one must go on the offensive.

"Defend, Consolidate, Advance" was a pivotal political slogan and strategic theme adopted by the United Democratic Front in South Africa during a critical turning point of the anti-apartheid struggle in the 80s.

I do believe that that slogan is as relevant today, as we face a regression in the realisation of human rights the world over.

We are called to do three distinct things: we must defend, we must consolidate, and we must advance.

First, we must defend.

We must fiercely guard the legal and constitutional space we created in 1994.

We must block every single attempt by conservative, patriarchal, or populist forces to dilute our rights - whether those attempts happen in government, in our institutions, or in our local communities.

Defending means showing absolute zero tolerance for anything which erodes our human rights.

Second, we must consolidate.

It is not enough for rights to exist beautifully on paper.

We must entrench them into the daily, lived reality of every woman, every child, and every LGBTQIA person in this country.

Consolidating means transforming abstract legal rights into concrete socio-economic power.

It means ensuring that when a woman enters a police station to report domestic abuse, she is met with empathy, dignity and support, not secondary trauma.

It means funding shelters, clearing DNA backlogs, providing support services, ensuring our courts function well, streamlining procedural complexities, and breaking down barriers which prevent people from exercising their rights.

Third, we must advance.

The march did not end at the summit of Meintjieskop in 1956, and our struggle cannot stagnate here at Constitution Hill in 2026.

We must push forward to pioneer new frontiers of liberation.

Advancing means boldly closing the gender wage gap.

It means dismantling workplace patriarchy.

It means transforming the legal profession and the judicial officers on the bench so that our justice system reflects the demographics of our country.

It means expanding economic ownership so that women are not just participants in the economy, but builders and leaders of resilient economies.

It means advancing legal protections that ensure absolute safety and institutional recognition for trans-gender and non-binary individuals in every school, hospital, and workplace.

 

Conclusion

Seventy years ago, the women of 1956 gave us a slogan that has echoed through seven decades of struggle: "Wathint 'abafazi, wathit' imbokodo". You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock.

A rock is heavy, solid, and enduring.

A rock does not roll backward down a hill unless those holding it choose to let go.We are, and we remain, the custodians of holding that rock.

Government, civil society, our Chapter 9 bodies, the judiciary, the legal profession, and the community are the hands holding that rock.

And we must refuse to let go.

Let us leave Constitution Hill today with renewed strength, with deeper solidarity in our partnerships, and an unwavering resolve in our hearts.

As we scale the hills of justice, let us continue the climb, resisting the global regression, breaking through systemic barriers, and marching upward together until substantive equality is a tangible reality for every single human being.

I thank you.