women’s charter tapestries

The Women’s Charter Tapestries depict women’s brave struggle for gender equality. Originally designed for a planned Women’s Museum of Living History in Tshwane, all twelve pieces explore themes of women’s emancipation and draw attention to the inherently patriarchal structure of traditional Xhosa culture. Some of the elderly women in the community who participated in the historic 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings provided the inspiration for the work. Taking clauses from the Women’s Charter in 1956, the Women’s Charter in 1994 and creating their own clauses in 2016, the artists record names and images of personal and historic significance. In this way they acknowledge the women who courageously marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 while also honouring themselves and asserting their right to freedom, equality and human dignity.

Taken from the 1956 Women’s Charter:

Women’s lot, we share the cares of our menfolk

• A common experience of rural women such as those of the Peddie district, who shoulder the burden of responsibility for the children and hard work in the rural homestead while the men go off to the city to work on the mines

Removal of all laws that discriminate against us as women

• Stories the older women told the artists about their march to Peddie in August 1956

A single society, we join hands with our men to remove social evils

• Shows women taking their place alongside men in all activities

Need for education, emancipation

• Fighting for equal education

We strive for removal of all laws that discriminate against us as women

• Strike a woman, strike a rock / You have tampered with the women you have struck (wathinta umfazi, wathinta imbikodo)

Browns, sepias and greys were used in this series, giving the impression of old photographs, with the text of the Charter in coloured or silver thread showing the hope the Charter brought during dark times.

Taken from the 1994 Charter:  

As women citizens of South Africa we are here to claim our rights

• All creeds and races join together to demand their rights

Recognition of work at home

• Shows the hard work of rural women in the home

Recognition of our work in the community

• Rural Hamburg women working with selfless dedication in the community

We claim full and equal participation

• This work uses a local incident to illustrate the principle of full and equal participation.
• The women in the community, supported by the men, became very angry at the police’s refusal to arrest brothers from a certain family who had raped and stabbed several Hamburg After taking the law into their own hands, some community members were charged with arson. After years of court cases, the community members who were charged were finally acquitted due to the circumstances of the crimes of rape and murder in question. In response to the ‘Victory March’ of 2016 the artists made this work: “Sasitshilomhlali liduduma lidule mntakamama” (We said in our community that this will come to an end).

In this series and the final series, a blue palette mixed with full colour is used to speak to hope and renewal, promise and change.

Clauses generated as ‘Present and hope for the future’ (2016):

Keep girl children in school, choice of family planning, housing for all, freedom to choose, keep our children safe

• Shows that there are still needs to be addressed for women in the Hamburg community

 Stop abuse of women and children, houses for women and children, free tertiary education, improved education, employment for women

• Honours the older women in the Hamburg community involved in the 1956 march to Peddie and looks forward to using their example to protest against current issues of concern, including gender-based violence and inferior education 

We are strong, we have won, we stand together to face the future

• Women celebrate their strength together, now feeling equal to men and working in jobs that were traditionally only for men (reference from 1956 Charter, ‘A women’s lot’)

The phrases for these pieces emerged from discussions around what still needs to be achieved for women to feel a sense of equality, freedom and human dignity.