“If you stand for nothing……………………..”

“Silence in the face of injustice is injustice in action”

I remember years ago as a novice freelancer going to an anti Zuma march in Cape Town. I remember been cautioned to “be careful” and “do you think it’s safe”. Protest have a way of unravelling and becoming violent when people’s emotions get out of hand. However, I was determined to get pictures and be “part of the action”. There I was. One of many media persons and hundreds of protestors. My mission was accomplished.

So in the grand scheme of things the protest march to highlight the need for free sanitary products for women was probably never going to attract huge media attention. It was mentioned on a news bulletin earlier the morning. The organisers, Team Free Sanitary Pads NPC had apparently received some thirty thousand signatures in support and the protest was to culminate in memorandums been handed over to parliamentary representatives in Cape Town and Pretoria. There were two media house photographers, a TV crew and me. I would guess the protestors numbered about forty. The demographic mix deserves a mention. Adi (More about her later) whispered to me, “I am the only white face here. What’s wrong with my people”.  The rest of the group were all black. Needless to say this begs a bigger question that needs answering. For now we’ll park that one.  What is however very clear is there seems to be a very apathetic lens through which our privileged society views this issue. It’s the old “if it doesn’t affect me, why should I give a damn” kind of feeling. The march deserved a bigger crowd. Even If you are not affected by “period poverty”, at least adding your presence and voice to something that is very real, would have made a difference. There were one or two ladies there that took off from work to be there. Such was their commitment to the cause.

I’m not going to go into the detail of how I met Adi, suffice to say she runs a fledgling NGO called Maluuk Explores. Its purpose is to highlight the plight of women in the far flung places in rural Africa who do not have access to sanitary products. To mitigate this she and others have developed a handmade reusable sanitary pad made from fabric and using plastic bags as the “insulation layer”. It’s not a new concept. There are others doing it. But the passion with which Adi speaks and the fact that she is single-handedly driving this initiative is nothing short of amazing. And as is the case with many NGO’s, funding and support is always upper most in any discussion.

There is a need to create an awareness of the plight of not only rural women and young girls, but the women that live with our city and provincial boundaries.  A few weeks back, Scotland became the first country to supply free sanitary products to all women and girls in need on a national scale. A quick google search revealed they are not alone. Countries like New Zealand and Kenia do it on a smaller scale, making products available to girls in public schools. Here, in the most constitutionally democratic country in the world, a small group of women need to have a march in the capitol city to raise awareness and force some insignificant representative of parliament to accept a memorandum of demand.

 

 

The reality is this. One week in every month there are women who need to take off from work because they are simply too ill to be there. Many cannot afford to buy the products and medication needed that would make life easier for them and perhaps enable them to be at work.  The same applies to young girls. Many are not able to attend school for the exact same reason. Time lost to this monthly cycle cannot be retrieved. “Period Poverty” as it has become known, is very real and very prevalent in the lives of millions of women across our country. We need to take notice of it and support it. 

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything