Seventy years of standing up and standing tall

Black Sash is not a relic of the past, it is a necessary force in the present

- OLIVER METH

SEVENTY years ago, a handful of principled women stood on a street corner, draped in black sashes, their silence cutting through the noise of apartheid’s rising tide.

They were not politicians. They held no official power. Yet in that moment, they birthed a movement that would become one of South Africa's most enduring voices of conscience. It was 1955. Parliament was moving to tear Coloured voters from the roll. The Constitution was under siege. And in a society that expected women to host tea parties and keep quiet, these women chose to stand instead - silent, unwavering, unafraid.

What began as a quiet protest on the streets of Cape Town would ignite a movement. That black sash - meant to mourn the death of justice - became a symbol of defiance, dignity, and fierce moral clarity. With each vigil, each march, each brave act of bearing witness, they stitched a new kind of resistance into the fabric of South African history. Black Sash was born - not in shouts or slogans, but in silence. And that silence roared. Nelson Mandela once called Black Sash “the conscience of white South Africa” the moral compass, the truth-teller, the ethical anchor in an era of silence. And now, in 2025, that iconic sash turns 70.

Thanks to a small group of white women appalled by the erosion of constitutional democracy in South Africa particularly the National Party’s attempt to strip Coloured voters of their right to vote in the Cape Province. These women - wives, mothers, professionals - stood in silent protest, daring to dissent in a world where women were expected to keep quiet. They were dismissed at the time - "tea ladies with too much time" as one politician once said. But history had other plans.