“If you strike a woman, you strike a rock.”

Every year on 9 August South Africa celebrates Women’s Day, a public holiday commemorating the August 9, 1956 when 20,000 South African women of all races marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria. The protest opposed the Urban Areas Act, commonly known as the Pass Laws, legislation that required ‘non-whites’ to carry a document known as the Dom Pas which would allow them to move around, or live in ‘White South Africa’.

About 20 000 women – many carrying the children of their white bosses on their backs – took part in the peaceful march.

After dropping off petitions containing more than 100 000 signatures, they stood in silence for thirty minutes. A song was composed in honour of this momentous occasion, “Wathint’ Abafazi Wathint’ imbokodo!” (Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock).

The Day That Rock Beat Paper is an advert for the Apartheid Museum, developed at TBWA\Hunt Lascaris, showing a woman’s clenched fist and a white male hand holding an identity card for Bangephi Grace Ndwandwe.

Source: The Apartheid Museum and the Cape Town magazine.