The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) in Jack Charles Bezuidenhout region (formerly Wits central) supported the ANC Women’s League’s (ANCWL) who organised a march on the issue of miniskirts on the February 17.
Sizwe Dlamini, Numsa JCB regional secretary, said: “The march on miniskirts should not be de-linked from the broader class struggles to defeat capitalism, because capitalism as a system is inherently immoral and sexist, and reduces women to cheap sexual commodities for men’s pleasure.”
The march was also about the intensification of our struggle for the nationalisation and socialisation of the means of production; a total ban on labour brokers, including the casualisation of labour; the creation of decent jobs; the provision of free, quality public education; and a new growth path that is not embedded in failed neo-liberal policies and market fundamentalism.
This is in order to reverse the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and deepening inequalities which has placed working class and poor women at the receiving end of capitalist brutality.
“The backward and chauvinistic attacks on women wearing miniskirts in our country’s taxi ranks, especially at the Noord Street taxi rank, highlights the deep-seated and embedded sexism and rottenness of our society as personified by some taxi landlords and drivers,” he said.
The right of women to freedom of movement, from sexual harassment and to dignity in our society can never be determined by the clothes that a woman chooses to wear.
The continuous harassment of women because of what they wear borders on societal patriarchy and relegates women into cheap sexual commodities, as fostered and entrenched by the immoral and barbaric capitalist system.
Numsa fully supports this march, as public transport users to register our total rejection of harassment or abuse of our mothers, daughters or sisters based on the clothes they choose to wear, but also most importantly against the derogatory utterances spewed or directed towards gays and lesbians by some of the rotten scum in our society, located in the taxi industry.
Numsa supports the ANCWL in its struggles.
Source
Numsa News No 1, April 2012