She reminded the audience of the degradation that the majority of South Africans had suffered under apartheid- suffered simply because of the colour of their skin. There was a sharp reminder for delegates of the simple everyday segregation that was commonplace- different toilets for different races, and different pavements. But these simple physical differences were a symbol of how the state systems institutionalised different life outcomes:-everything from the health service to the education service to the occupational system. Blacks were only considered suitable for unskilled work, farm work or suitable to be part of a servant class.
She reminded the Conference that everyone now claims to have been part of the movement that led to the freedom for Nelson Mandela, but that it was unions and the international anti apartheid movement that had kept up the pressure.
Joyce had no illusions about the difficulties of moving South Africa’s from a white capitalist state to a multi racial nation in which there is real equality practised on the ground. She spoke of how new labour laws had been passed, but that the private sector bypasses them by actualising the workforce. Employees are dismissed every two months to prevent them from realising employment rights. Similarly, land reform is difficult. Large tracts of South Africa remain in white hands but the costs of procuring it for redistribution means that it must remain a long term aim.
Joyce spoke of her involvement in student politics in the ANC youth wing, and of the impatience felt by many of the younger activists about the need for change. She was candid about the position of women-discriminated against through apartheid, but suffering additional gender discrimination as women, and particularly as working women with the double burden of paid and domestic labour. She has been involved in building women’s organisation within the ANC and in South African society, a project that means that within South African political structures women’s representation reaches 50%. Less than twenty years after the apartheid state was dismantled, our sisters have something to teach us.
But as Alexandra Kollantai, the key Bolshevik thinker pointed out a hundred years ago:- “For the bourgeois woman, political rights are simple a means to allow them to make their way more conveniently and more securely in a world founded on the exploitation of working people. For women workers, political rights are a step along the rocky and difficult path that leads to the deserved kingdom of labour”
No doubt Joyce would agree.
