How do South Africans celebrate women's day?

While International Women's Day is globally celebrated on March 8, National Women's Day is a South African, public holiday celebrated annually on August 9. National Women's Day is the recognition of the 1956 march of nearly 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to petition against the country's “pass laws”. Those laws required South Africans defined as "black", under The Population Registration Act, to carry an internal passport, known as a pass, that served to maintain population segregation, control urbanization, and manage migrant labor, during the apartheid era. Frances Baird, Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophia Williams were among the organizers.

The women left 15,000 petitions at the office door of prime minister J.G. Strijdom and stood silently for thirty minutes and then started singing a protest song that was composed in honor of the occasion: “Wathint'Abafazi Wathint'imbokodo!” It means, “Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock”. The phrase has since evolved into “you strike a woman, you strike a rock.”.

There are a lot of people who are not aware that South Africans celebrate women’s day differently. A lot of countries celebrate women’s day in order to stop discrimination against women.

In South Africa, they celebrate women’s day because they want to put a stop to the notion that the blacks should still carry passes if in case they would like to travel to a different place within the country.

This is a petition that was started out by women and it is still being fought for at present time. For South Africans, the celebration of women’s day is different.