On 9 August 1956, some 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Led by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn, they carried a simple but revolutionary message: our humanity is not negotiable. They protested against apartheid pass laws that criminalised their movement, their work and their existence. They demanded recognition as citizens with rights, agency and a stake in building their nation.
Seven decades later, as we mark Women’s Month, I’m struck by what those women were fighting for. It wasn’t just the removal of misogynistic and racist laws but the dismantling of systems designed to diminish women. They understood something we’re learning.
Women’s economic exclusion isn’t simply a social issue to be managed through corporate initiatives and charity. It’s a structural infrastructure challenge, as critical to our national prosperity as access to water, electricity or transport networks.
When we exclude women from economic participation, we’re not just limiting individual opportunity. We’re dismantling half the foundation of our economy. We’re losing productivity, entrepreneurship, innovation and consumer spending. We’re creating conditions where women remain financially dependent and vulnerable to abuse and violence. This is why women’s empowerment must be treated with the same urgency and strategic investment we apply to our physical infrastructure.
The 1956 marchers won a constitutional victory many never lived to fully enjoy. Today, our Constitution enshrines an equality clause recognising not just women’s rights but gender equality. Yet the march remains unfinished. The systems that constrain women have simply evolved, becoming more insidious and embedded in how we work, how we protect our communities and how we distribute opportunity.
Women’s empowerment as economic infrastructure
Here’s what we must acknowledge: women’s economic exclusion costs South Africa between R28 billion and R42 billion annually when we account only for gender-based violence. The figure doesn’t capture the lost productivity, entrepreneurship and innovation — when women flee their homes, they are locked out of leadership, technology and economic participation.
This isn’t a charity issue. It’s a structural economic problem.
When women lack mutual recognition, access to capital, supply chains, digital financial tools and skill development, entire communities suffer. When women face violence and remain trapped in abusive relationships because they have no voice or economic independence, our economy contracts. When girls aren’t educated to self-respect and lack formal education, we lose future leaders and entrepreneurs. Women’s empowerment isn’t a nice-to-have corporate initiative. It’s critical infrastructure for national prosperity.
Business has a responsibility
Business didn’t create the systems alone but business must help dismantle them. This is the imperative that drives forward-thinking companies.
At Vodacom South Africa, we’ve started by being honest about where we fall short. Yes, we can celebrate that women hold 54.5% of our executive committee seats, yet in our technology division, where many operational leaders are developed, women represent just 33.7% of roles. Acknowledging the gap is the first step to fixing it.
We’ve invested in building pathways like our Code Like a Girl initiative which has trained more than 4 000 girls this year in coding and digital skills. Our Female Leaders Programme builds the pipeline of black women for senior roles. Our flexible working arrangements mean 98.2% of women return after maternity leave. We’ve committed R17.9 billion of our South African procurement spend to local women-owned suppliers, making our supply chain a deliberate lever for women’s economic power.
Real empowerment goes beyond policy; it lives in a woman’s freedom to choose her own path. When we eliminate the threat of abuse and violence, we open doors to endless possibilities. True equality is a world where every woman safely and confidently decides her career, her goals and her own destiny.
Our domestic violence policy grants affected employees 10 days paid leave and support services. We’ve also recognised that intersectionality matters, hosting dedicated Vodacom spaces for LGBTIQA+ colleagues, people with disabilities, neurodiverse employees and youth. We also do not leave men behind in our empowerment programmes — we have established a men’s forum which encourages men to share their experiences in a patriarchal society that teaches the boy-child to hold power, hide weakness and vulnerability and to view dominance and toughness as the true sign of being a man.
When we fail to see the complexity of women’s identities and experiences, we leave the most vulnerable behind. We recognise that if we leave men behind, we might deepen cycles of pain and anger which manifest in despair or externalised hostility.
Here’s how we’re contributing
The work of the Vodacom South Africa Foundation is an externalisation of our Vodacom South Africa diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging policy. Since 2013, the Foundation has partnered with the Department of Social Development to operate the Gender-Based Violence Command Centre, a free counselling service. We’ve trained more than 1 500 survivors with ICT skills, enabling financial independence and reducing vulnerability. We launched Bright Sky SA, a zero-rated app offering risk assessment and support resources in English, isiZulu, and Sesotho.
We’ve committed R10 million to the Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Response Fund and have partnered with government to build Thuthuzela Care Centres across the country. We also provide psychosocial support in schools focusing on empowering learners, teachers and parents to detect, report and address societal ills that impact learner performance. But these are not isolated charity efforts. They’re investments in the infrastructure and services that allow all vulnerable members of communities in which we operate to feel liberated to participate fully in our economy and society, which leads us to the imperative before us.
The women who marched in 1956 understood that freedom requires systemic change, not just individual courage. They carried a banner: Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo, you strike a woman, you strike a rock.
That spirit remains South Africa’s greatest untapped resource.
But rocks only become powerful through collective action. The objectives of the 1956 march remain relevant to corporate South Africa. True gender empowerment is not about statistics or a compliance checklist; it requires a sustained commitment to removal of structural biases, protecting employee welfare and building viable leadership pipelines from early childhood development up to the executive floor. Achieving the benchmarks is essential to fulfilling the country’s constitutional promise.
This Women’s Month, let us commit to recognising women’s empowerment for what it is: essential infrastructure. And let every business, every government and every community ask themselves: What systems are we building to complete the march those women started?
Takalani Netshitenzhe is the external affairs director for Vodacom South Africa
