Lilian Masediba Ngoyi

Lilian Masediba Matabane Ngoyi, the principal leader of the August 1956 anti-pass-laws Women's March on the Union Buildings of Pretoria, was born on the twenty-fifth of September 1911 at Bloed Street of the principal Marabastad Black-township district of Pretoria of the Union of South Africa, the principal daughter of Isaac Matabane (a Pedi mine worker on the principal Pretoria-and-Witwatersrand gold reef) and Anna Matabane.

She was raised across the principal opening decades of the twentieth century in the principal Marabastad Black-township establishment — and was instructed in the principal Pedi and English literacy of the principal Kilnerton Methodist mission school at Pretoria, the principal classical and biblical canon of the principal Wesleyan Methodist mission curriculum, and the principal nursing-and-seamstress training of the principal City Deep Hospital and the principal Pretoria Tailor's Workshop where she was apprenticed from 1930.

She married in 1936 the principal John Ngoyi (a tailor of the Pretoria-and-Witwatersrand Black-tailors' establishment), was widowed in 1944, and worked across 1945 to 1956 as a seamstress at the principal Witwatersrand garment factories of Johannesburg under the principal Garment Workers' Union of Solly Sachs — the principal multi-racial garment workers' union of the principal South African Trades and Labour Council.

She joined the principal African National Congress Women's League at the principal 1952 Defiance Campaign of the principal joint ANC-and-South African Indian Congress satyagraha against the principal Suppression of Communism Act and the principal pass laws. She rose by 1953 to the principal ANC Women's League Transvaal Provincial Secretaryship, by April 1956 to the principal ANC Women's League National Presidency, and by August 1956 to the principal Co-Presidency of the principal Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) — the principal multi-racial women's federation of the principal Congress Alliance, co-founded in 1954 by Helen Joseph, Ray Alexander, Florence Mkhize, Annie Silinga and Lilian Ngoyi.

She led on the principal ninth of August 1956 the principal Women's March on the Union Buildings of Pretoria — the principal twenty-thousand-woman delegation that walked from the principal Pretoria Black townships to the principal Union Buildings to deliver the principal hundred-thousand-signature petition to the principal Prime Minister J.G. Strijdom against the principal extension of the pass laws to Black women. Strijdom refused to receive the principal delegation; Ngoyi led the principal twenty-thousand women in the principal thirty-minute silent vigil on the principal Union Buildings amphitheatre, then in the principal singing of the principal Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo (You strike a woman, you strike a rock) anti-pass-laws anthem composed for the principal march.

She was banned by the principal South African Suppression of Communism Act in 1962, served the principal Treason Trial of 1956 to 1961 (acquitted with the principal other accused), was banned again in 1972 and again in 1975, and lived under continuous banning order in her Orlando West, Soweto house from 1962 until her death. She died at Soweto on the thirteenth of March 1980 of natural causes, at sixty-eight, under the principal banning order that prohibited her from speaking with more than one person at a time. She is honored here as the principal President of the African National Congress Women's League and the principal leader of the 1956 anti-pass-laws Women's March of South Africa.