Updated: 21st august 2002
In a unique collaboration between government, non-governmental organisations, private individuals and a private company, women have joined hands to offer something unique to the public and to Summit delegates from all over the world. The Commission on Gender Equality (CGE) has steered the transformation of the historic women's jail at the Fort on Constitution Hill into a Women's Centre for Summit delegates to meet, to enjoy South African culture and to replenish their energy at healing workshops.
The Women's Centre Programme:
We have created a space that will relax, nurture and invigorate you. Come and visit our Atrium Art exhibition and our photographic exhibitions on women, or relax with tea and cake at the coffee shop. Browse through the crafts created by local women, or the bookshop that has a focus on South Africa. Keep in touch at the Women'sNet Cyber Cafe.
The Women's Centre will host meetings and mini-conferences for WSSD delegates, including a Pre-Summit on Peace and Development and the Africa Caucus. The works of some women artists are on display. Enjoy a jazz evening and other song, dance and drumming events.
The Children's Centre:
Bring your children to enjoy their own workshops - art therapy (making human figures); children's yoga; using the senses creatively; body awareness and circle dancing.
The VOICES healing workshops include art therapy; storytelling; African traditional healing; drama therapy; drumming; relaxation; universal peace dance; drama therapy; sandplay and touch therapy.
The Atrium Art Exhibition will be opened on 24 August 2002. Entitled "THREE WOMEN", it focuses on Daisy de Melker, Nomathemba Funani, and Jeannie Noel - A murderer, an ordinary woman spurred to become a pass resister, and a political activist from Durban. Through silk, sound and photographs, we tell the stories of three very different women who spent time at the Women's Gaol, in 1932, 1956, and 1976, and whose ghosts and memories still occupy its cells and corridors.
A Film Festival, featuring incredible footage of African people's stories, will continue throughout the Summit. It will open with 'the unfolding of sky' on 21 August. This is about an encounter between two South African women, a white Afrikaner and an African and their experiences of suffering and of reconciliation.
We have a quiet candle lit space for when you need to be still and an interfaith women's group will be holding various activities from 14 August. Women'sNet is running a fully functional cyber café with trained assistants and several non-governmental organisations have used space for their work.
In an effort to be environmentally friendly, we have ensured that, as far as possible, the Women's Centre will recycle all its waste. We have paper, plastic, glass and aluminium facilities on site. Please aid us in making the Women's Centre a Zero Waste site.
Women behind bars:
The Women's jail was built in 1909 to house women prisoners and was in use until 1983, when the prisoners were moved to "Sun City", the Diepkloof prison. The main crimes committed by inmates were theft, fraud, prostitution, brewing and breaking the pass laws.
Women were picked up off the streets for not producing their passes, for breaking the Immorality Act or simply because it was feared that they might become engaged in subversive activities. They were dragged into trucks and packed into the prison's tiny cells, unable to contact their families. From the earliest days of the prison, it was overcrowded.
The four main meeting rooms in the jail have been named after the leaders of the Women's March on the Union Buildings in August 1956 to protest against the Pass Laws: Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Sophia Williams-de Bruyn and Rahima Moosa.
The Commission on Gender Equality (CGE)
is a Chapter 9 Institution, established in terms of our new Constitution (1996) to implement democracy in South Africa. The aim of the CGE is to promote gender equality, to advise Parliament or any other legislature about laws or proposed legislation which affect gender equality and the status of women.
Constitution Hill:
The jail forms part of the Constitution Hill heritage site in Johannesburg, which is open to the public as a work still in construction. The site includes the old Zuid Afrikaanse Republic Fort occupied by the Boers and then the British before its transition into a white males' prison in 1892. It overlooks the city, the 'native's' prison and the former awaiting trial prison, where famous figures including Nelson Mandela and peace campaigner Mahatma Gandhi were once detained.
"Constitution Hill is being turned into an extraordinary symbol of democracy and constitutional rights of South Africa. This development transforms this prominent, yet grossly unacknowledged, site into a beacon of a new order of civil rights and constitutional progress," the Johannesburg Development Agency statement says.
For more information:
Web site: http://www.womensnet.org.za/wssdwomen/index.shtml
Tel:+27-11-403 0189 email: wssdwomenscentre@yahoo.com
Natasha PRIMO Project Manager: Women'sNet (SANGONeT) PO Box 31
Johannesburg 2000
South AfricaTel: +27-11-838 6943/4 Fax: +27-11-492 1058
From a listserver set up by the CSD Women's Caucus, a global group of women and men working on gender & sustainable development issues. It has been established to circulate information in preparation for the UN Commission on Sustainable Development Sessions and Earth Summit 2002 (officially the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa, Sept. 2002).
To learn more about the CSD Women's Caucus activities, check the web-site at www.earthsummit2002.org/wcaucus/csdngo.htm
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