South Africa will only be free when women are. . .

Damn straight. As we have talked about before, South Africa is (like the rest of the world) plagued by absurd amounts of violence against women. In protest of the oppression of women and to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1956 march for women’s rights, women gathered and marched yesterday on South Africa’s capital.
Some comments from the president. . .

As long as SA was plagued by domestic violence and the rape and abuse of women, it could not claim to have achieved the full emancipation of women, President Thabo Mbeki said at the Union Buildings in Tshwane yesterday to mark Women’s Day.
Mbeki called on the leaders of all sectors of society to participate in a programme to eradicate “the sickness that results in the abuse and murder of women and children�. Other challenges that he cited were to defeat poverty and the poor access to resources suffered mostly by women.
“We have to ensure that the economic wealth we generate is shared in a manner that benefits the poor, including the women in the rural and urban areas of our country … we must uphold the perspective that none of us is free unless the women of our country are free — free from race and gender discrimination, free from poverty and loss of human dignity, and free from fear and violence.�
Most institutions professed commitment to gender equality and the emancipation of women. However, their actual practices were often worlds apart from the stated policies, he said.

Granted talk and action are two different things. But Westerners are so quick to talk shit about women’s rights in other countries. If Dubya EVER actually addressed the issue of inequity and gender in the US, well we might all just fall over and die.
via BusinessDay.