State Welfare Organization and UNFPA Highlight Shared Commitment to Strengthening Local Communities

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the Women's March, the author addresses the memory of Helen Joseph, whose resilience continues to inspire. Seventy years have passed since she and twenty thousand women of all races marched to the Union Buildings. The author notes that the words that helped make her immortal continue to resonate across the country: 'Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo!' (Strike the woman, strike the rock).

These words, in the author's opinion, are not merely a slogan for the day of remembrance, but a living command and a sound of defiance that arose on the amphitheater in Pretoria in 1956 and continues to demand courage from every generation unwilling to bow their heads.

Women's Day: Lessons in Resistance

The author shares how he first understood the true meaning of these words through Helen, 'Mama Helen.' Sitting at her modest home at 35 Fanny Avenue in Norwood, he received the story of the struggle for liberation as a living truth. Helen did not give lectures; she spoke with the quiet authority of someone who had lived every word she uttered.

She taught him that the fight against apartheid was not just about laws, passes, and identity documents, but about the complete rejection of a system built on racial domination and economic plunder. The author internalized that compromise with apartheid, racism, or those who sell the struggle for a seat at the oppressors' table is impossible. His own life served as the clearest proof of this principle.

Thanks to her, the author met Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mama Albertina Sisulu, and Mama Sophie de Bruyn. These names became alive for him through Helen, who explained how the Great Women's March of 1956 was organized and what it truly meant. She spoke of the meticulous planning and discipline required to move thousands of women in small groups so that authorities could not easily stop them, as well as the petitions carried by ordinary women who decided enough was enough.

The author saw that the march was the result of deep organization, courage, and political clarity, not a spontaneous outburst. Through her, he grasped the living significance of the Freedom Charter. Helen was present at its launch at the Congress of the People in Kliptown on June 26, 1955, and read the clause: 'The people shall have the right to live in homes, with security and comfort.' These words still demand fulfillment and remain an unpaid debt.

Madiba's Miracles: Memory and Defiance

For many long years, when the ANC and other liberation movements were banned, Helen kept alive the memory of those in exile, in prison, and all political prisoners. She did not allow the regime to erase them from the minds of those who remained in the country. Every Christmas, when she was not under house arrest, friends and family of political prisoners gathered at 35 Fanny Avenue.

Exactly at noon, she would raise a glass of champagne and say simple but firm words: 'To our absent friends.' And every glass responded. This ritual was a solemn, almost sacred act of political memory and defiance. Even when the regime restricted her and banned visitors, she appeared at the garden gate at this sacred time, holding a glass while comrades stood across the road at a legal distance, raising their fists in greeting to black power, raising glasses in solidarity, and shouting 'Amandla!'

Even the walls of Robben Island knew about this ritual. Men and women imprisoned in those cells understood that they had not been forgotten. She took care of it. The author recalls one morning when he came to her home and found her, already in her eighties, sweeping shards of glass and wood splinters from the floor after shots had been fired at her windows that night. She spent dark hours under the bed, sheltering from the gunfire, but when he entered, the fire was still burning in her eyes. 'These bastards will never break me,' she said. And they never could. Attacks repeated: stones in windows, phone threats, paint thrown on cars, nighttime shootings, a bomb placed at her front entrance. She survived it all. Her body aged, but her spirit did not.

Even in the year of her death in 1992, she was fiercely critical of the compromises reached in the early years of negotiations after the ANC ban was lifted. Due to her clear political vision, she already saw the unacceptable direction and dangerous compromises these early talks were taking. As was characteristic of her, she spoke out and warned even at an early stage, right up until her last breath on her deathbed. She shared the deep concern of Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Comrade Chris Hani that too much was being given away. She saw the danger in an agreement that would leave the fundamental economic structures of apartheid largely untouched. She understood that without political rights, most people would remain trapped in poverty and landlessness. She refused to celebrate prematurely, insisting on the principle when others were already preparing to lower the standard of what the struggle demanded.

Her support for Mama Winnie never wavered. In lonely years when she had to raise Zindi and Zenani alone while Nelson Mandela was in prison, she was one of those who stood by her, helping to care for the girls. She opened her home and her heart. Despite every campaign of slander and propaganda directed against her, she remained her defender, even when it cost her friendship and political comfort. She supported her 100% without reservation. She never compromised. She understood the special cruelty aimed at women who refuse to break, and she stood by her without calculation.

She recorded the truth in books that still speak. If 'This Be Treason' is her dramatic narrative of the Treason Trial, the longest political trial in South African history, and 'Tomorrow's Sun' documents her long journey of thousands of miles to describe the lives of those exiled to remote rural areas for resisting apartheid and pass laws, then her beautiful autobiography 'Side by Side' takes its name directly from the concluding words of the Freedom Charter: 'We shall strive for these freedoms, hand in hand, throughout our lives until we achieve our freedom.' Through this book, the golden thread of indestructibility runs from the first to the last page. It is not sentimental memoirs; it is a political testimony, recording a life lived in continuous opposition to racial domination and in continuous solidarity with those who suffered from it.

On December 25, 1992, exactly at noon—the hour she always dedicated to her absent friends in prison and in exile—she left us. The author was by her bedside in what was then called J.G. Stridt Hospital. It was one of the loneliest, saddest, and most heartbreaking moments of his life. The coincidence of the timing was almost unbearable. The woman who annually kept the memory of the prisoners alive at this exact time was now breathing her last breath at the same time. This hospital is now named after her: Helen Joseph Hospital. Even in death, the regime's name was erased, and her name rose in its place. There is a profound justice in this renaming. The person whose name the hospital bore was the prime minister to whom the women of 1956 petitioned. History, in a sense, answered.

Not a single day in his political life passes without the influence of her mentorship. When pressure arises to soften demands, to make concessions, or to sell a piece of a dream for temporary advantage, he asks himself: what would Mama Helen do? The answer is always the same: no compromises. No capitulation. No polite acceptance of half-measures that leave the structures of inequality untouched. The struggle continues until fundamental economic transformation is achieved, which they fought for. Land. Wealth. Dignity. Homes, security, and comfort for all. These are not optional extras; they are the unfinished business of the Freedom Charter and the generation that marched in 1956.

Today, seventy years after the Women's March, he greets her with the same cry that rose from the Union Buildings amphitheater. He greets the rock that refused to crack. He greets the woman who taught him that principle is not a luxury, but a necessity. He greets the mentor who shaped his political understanding in the crucible of real resistance, not in the comfort of theory. 'Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo!'

She taught him that a woman who refuses to surrender is like a rock against which every wave of oppression must break. He remains her student. The fire she lit still burns. It burns in the refusal to accept cosmetic changes while the essence of injustice remains the same. It burns in the demand that the Freedom Charter not be reduced to a historical curiosity, but viewed as a living program. It burns in the memory of every glass raised for absent friends. It burns in the knowledge that the struggle is not over simply because formal political power has changed.

The debt to Mama Helen cannot be repaid with words. It can only be repaid with constant fidelity to the principles she embodied: no compromise with racism, no compromise with those who sell the struggle. Full commitment to radical economic transformation, which can make freedom real for the majority of his people. The fire she lit still burns. Amandla!

The European Union (EU) is currently debating the creation of migrant return centers in third countries and is open to intensifying its external borders through physical, technological, and human resources.

This debate is shaped by a complex decade, which includes the 2015 refugee crisis, the use of migratory flows by external countries, the questioning of the Schengen area, the rise of right-wing and far-right forces, and a gradual shift in European policy towards stricter control, accelerated returns, and greater collaboration with countries of origin and transit.

The incident that occurred in Ceuta, with the arrival of tens of thousands of individuals from Morocco, brought this issue back to the main focus. This led Brussels to demand the 'full' implementation of the new migration guidelines and to 'strengthen the common response' through increased surveillance and improved prevention systems.

The European Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Magnus Brunner, argued that 'Europe has never had so much control over irregular migration as it does now.' However, he warned that the images of the humanitarian tragedy, which resulted in at least 141 deaths, according to data from NGOs such as Caminando Fronteras and the Moroccan Association of Human Rights, require learning 'the correct lessons.'

For the executive body, these lessons involve speeding up deportations, strengthening the role of Frontex, and tightening partnerships with third countries, while reinforcing mechanisms to identify disinformation campaigns or coordinated migratory movements.

Carmen González, a researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute, explains that this change cannot be understood without considering the 'interstate conflicts' generated since 2015 by the management of asylum seekers. These conflicts revealed 'deep differences' between member states and have become an 'existential threat' to free movement due to the lack of common rules.

Added to this internal fissure are 'two major shocks' that, according to the researcher, changed how European societies viewed arrivals. She cites that in 2021, Morocco stimulated the entry of thousands of people into Ceuta during a diplomatic crisis with Spain, and Belarus facilitated the arrival of migrants in Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, in retaliation for European sanctions.

These migratory movements added a layer of security to a debate that previously focused on reception policies. After almost ten years of negotiations, the EU finally approved the Migration and Asylum Pact in 2024, which comes into force this June and establishes, among other things, controls and accelerated procedures at external borders and a solidarity system.

The transformation is also visible in the debate about physical barriers. For many years, Brussels refused to finance walls or fences built by European countries on their external borders with community budget money, despite requests from various governments, although it provided European funds for surveillance, equipment, or complementary infrastructure.

The most notable change occurred in the field of returns. The new European legislation, approved by the European Parliament in June, allows sending people with a final expulsion decision to centers located in third countries, even if they have no ties to them, provided there is an agreement and certain guarantees are met.

The Spanish Green MEP, Mélissa Camara, told Europa Press that 'the legalization of these centers outside the EU makes our return policy more dehumanized than ever. There, people have no name: they are identified by numbers and suicide attempts are regularly reported. They have no idea of the day or time and also do not know when they can leave.'

On the other hand, Javier Zarzalejos, president of the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties and MEP for the European People's Party (EPP), refutes that these devices allow talk of an externalization of European migration policy, considering them merely 'another instrument,' dependent on agreements with states that must respect Union law and fundamental rights.

This legislative evolution occurred parallel to a change in the European political landscape, where immigration began to influence public debate, government alliances, and political programs in an increasing number of member states.

González points to the European elections of June 2024 as another relevant milestone, due to the advance of conservative and far-right forces and the retreat of socialists, liberals, and greens, which resulted in a European Parliament 'much more favorable to prioritizing restrictive policies.'

The researcher emphasizes, however, that this phenomenon does not only affect conservative parties, as in the last decade, historical groups such as the social democrats of Germany, Sweden, or Denmark have also hardened their positions regarding the displacement of some of their voters towards anti-immigration stances.

González explains that 'immigration has ceased to be a relatively marginal issue in the political life of some European states to become a central theme,' framing the community's evolution within a 'steadily more restrictive spirit of the times' that 'extends beyond European borders.'

Camara, however, focuses her criticism on the EPP and part of the Renew liberals, accusing them of having chosen to 'build alternative majorities with the far-right' since the last European elections, to approve migration measures that would hardly have gained support before.

She emphasizes: 'During the negotiations on the Return Regulation, the far-right participated directly in negotiating the commitments. They were seated at the negotiation table and imposed some of their red lines. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago.'

Zarzalejos, for his part, denies that his political family has adopted the far-right agenda and argues that measures such as the new return system seek to respond to problems that 'exist and concern citizens,' in addition to avoiding the perception that governments are 'being overtaken' by migratory flows.

In parallel, the EU faces another paradox: while demanding greater control of its perimeter, countries like France, Germany, or Austria have reintroduced internal controls in a space designed to eliminate barriers between its members, despite the Schengen Borders Code considering them an 'exceptional and temporary measure' in the face of 'serious threats to public order or national security.'

In June, the Commission took an unprecedented formal step by requesting nine countries to 'progressively eliminate and gradually lift' these measures, asking that they be replaced by 'alternatives and mitigating measures,' such as increased police cooperation, non-systematic checks, or new technological tools.

Currently, the Ceuta crisis has once again tested these rules, after Italy decided to impose controls on travelers from Spain, despite Madrid stating that almost all migrants returned to Morocco and Brussels confirming that there were no displacements to the rest of the continent.