Lilian Ngoyi

Lilian Masediba Ngoyi was born on 25 September 1911 in the village of Ga-Ramutla in the Pretoria district. The daughter of a miner and a domestic worker, she was raised by her grandparents after her father's death. She trained as a nurse and worked at the City Deep Mine Hospital, where she witnessed the devastating effects of tuberculosis and silicosis on black miners.

In 1950, Ngoyi joined the ANC, and in 1952, she was elected president of the ANC Women's League. She was one of the principal organisers of the 1956 Women's March to the Union Buildings, where twenty thousand women protested against the extension of pass laws to women. Her famous speech at the march, in which she declared that the government had struck a rock and that the women would not be moved, became one of the most iconic moments in South African history.

Ngoyi's activism came at a great personal cost. In 1956, she was one of the 156 defendants in the Treason Trial. She was banned and restricted to Orlando, Soweto. In 1960, she was arrested and held in solitary confinement for seventy-one days, becoming one of the first women in South Africa to be held in isolation for political reasons. The experience broke her health but not her spirit.

Despite the banning orders and the constant harassment of the security police, Ngoyi continued to organise women in Soweto through underground networks. She established sewing cooperatives and food gardens that provided income and sustenance for families affected by the pass laws.

Lilian Ngoyi passed away on 13 March 1980 at the age of sixty-eight, largely forgotten by the public and living in poverty. Yet her legacy endures as one of the most courageous women in South African history. The Lillian Ngoyi Street in Pretoria and the annual Women's Day commemoration on 9 August honour a woman who proved that the courage of women could shake the foundations of an oppressive state.