Malala Yousafzai inspires at Women's Day event in SA, as Ramaphosa speaks against Afghan women's exclusion

President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Women's March in a speech at the Union Buildings, condemning the exclusion of Afghan women from classrooms, workplaces and public life. He praised Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, the event's guest of honor, who had been inspired by the 1956 march when she herself began campaigning for girls' education.

Yousafzai, who was 15 when the Taliban shot her in the head for insisting that girls attend school in Pakistan, spoke of the courage shown by the women of 1956, who faced greater challenges as black women in a patriarchal society. She expressed shock at the Taliban's ban on secondary schooling for Afghan girls in September 2021, which has led to 2.2 million girls being out of school.

Ramaphosa emphasized that no ideology can justify reducing women to lesser human beings. He linked the bravery of the 1956 marchers to the ongoing struggle for women's rights, noting the similarity between the situation in Afghanistan and the challenges faced by South African women.

The South African leader called the Taliban's treatment of women "gender apartheid" and demanded tangible results from the government's declaration of gender-based violence and femicide as a national disaster in November 2023. He urged men and boys to actively combat gender-based violence, emphasizing that it is the responsibility of all citizens to condemn such acts and not to look away.