BIG BUT / small but?

So tomorrow 09/08 is a public holiday in South Africa called National Women's Day. This commemorates the national march of women on this day in 1956 to petition against Pass Laws (if you don't know what that is google quickly - in secret - general knowledge is a requirement for being a world citizen)!!!

Anywhooo, I began asking myself about modern womanhood. I mean here we sit in Post Colonial Africa and Post Apartheid South Africa and I smiled, a very smug, self satisfied smile after all I'm living in the Golden Age, I can vote, I can go where I want whenever I want, with whoever I choose and my skirt can be as short as I like, my jeans can be as tight as the stretchy denim will allow and I can wear pasties over my nipples and call that top! Amazing right? Well sort of...

The reality is, we do have all these freedoms and we are handling the corresponding responsibilities pretty well, BUT... I'm not sure if it's a big but or a small one, but... Are we carrying the torch our mothers passed to us in the best way we possibly can? What I'm really asking is: What is my generation's legacy.

Let me paint a picture: imagine 20 000 women of all races and ages from every corner of South Africa marching together in protest against the pass laws that required African persons to carry the "pass", special ID documents which curtailed an African's freedom of movement. On that day and I suppose on the days preceding the march, women put aside language barriers, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and saw each other as equals. Further, the pass laws actually affected African men more than the women as the men were the ones who worked in the mines and towns away from home but the women stepped out boldly risking arrest, banning and detention. They left bundles of petitions containing more than 100 000 signatures! Outside they stood silently for 30 minutes (I think that was so classy and disciplined) many carried their children on their backs and those who were working for whites as nannies brought their white charges with them! Can you imagine!!!! By the way 09/08/56 was a Thursday! These women had jobs, kids, husbands and all the other things we hide behind... AMANDLA!