With the Women’s Month ending TOUCHLINE wants to take this opportunity to salute women who contributed so much to the development of sports in this country.
There are those women that South Africa will never write about for the role they played in our sports: past and current generation.
Apart from sports, there are also those women who contributed so much in the development of our country, academically, economically, politically and labour-wise, to say the least.
As TOUCHLINE always says, I grew up in a community where women would come to watch us playing football. This was long before women were encouraged to participate in sports, especially football.
Bo Mme MaMokete and Mathwala were not directly involved in football but, come Sunday afternoon, they would be there with their chairs, sitting behind the poles watching us play when we were still small “laities”.
In most cases, when we celebrate Women’s Day or Month we concentrate on those women who are popular in our community but what about those who are just ordinary women? Yes, they might not have degrees or not appear on television but the fact of the matter is that they contribute a lot compared to those who always make headlines.
Those who grew up in Evaton will attest to this. In the past some women would even volunteer to wash our soccer kits without being paid. There were also those women in our community who would ask us to do their gardening and give us money to pay for football or school trips.
These are the women I’m talking about – they were not just women. If they caught you doing something wrong they would give you a hiding and take you to your parents who would also give you a hiding.
But things have changed so much and we no longer have these women in our community. I’m talking about those women who when they found you in uniform on the street during school hours, they would grab you by your hand and drag you to school.
These are the women we should honour in the month of August. They don’t have to be famous or be on television or in newspaper headlines.
TOUCHLINE will forever be grateful to women like Mme MaMokete, MaThwala and other ordinary women in our community. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think some of us would have become the men and women we are today.
Without you I don’t think this country would be where it is today.
We need more women like you.
Young people should go back to their communities where we grew up and say to those women “THANK YOU” for raising us.
