And then She spoke

My turn to speak had finally came. Slowly the day advanced, quickly and quietly my time drew nearer. When i had been given the opportunity i had done an inquiry as to what i should be talking about and for how long. The answer i was given was “ anything about women and as long as you want” well  i assume management thought being a women i would know what to talk about and it would come from the core of my beings, “ womanhood”.  Let’s just say with the freedom i was given to write my speech i began to panic as i soon became desperate “youtube” became my friend as i soon began clicking on how to write and inspiring speech etc. Soon to me it became clear that i needed to research about the people I would be addressing.

N- Street Village ( were i spoke) is both a day and night shelter, a community of empowerment and recovery for the homeless and low- income women. With comprehensive services addressing both emergency and long time needs, the Village helps women achieve personal stability and make gains in their housing, income, employment, mental health, physical health and addiction recovery. You would think with all this information given my speech would then be easier to write, wrong, i soon began having panics on whether should i narrow  the speech down to a certain struggle or should i be broad?

As a tradition of N-Street Village, Carol Wheeler an amazing woman and a board member of SAWIP USA, she had the responsibility each month of throwing a birthday party for the women in the Village who would be celebrating their birthdays. That week and the day I was to speak it would be such day of celebration for the July babies. With that word “celebration” my speech was soon written. as I began scribing down my speech I simply titled it “CELEBRATING WOMEN”.

Celebrating Women

Good evening Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Nompumelelo Vunguvungu I am a student of law at the University of the Western Cape and I am part of SAWIP class of 2011.

I want to welcome each and every one this evening to this auspicious occasion tonight.

Seeing that the room is fully encompassed by women and I myself being one I will speak to each and every one of them.

Coming from and being in a country were women have made their make, their impact in history I thought it would be accurate to celebrate women that have made their make into history and some of them are in this room right now.  I want to commemorate women that faced adversaries head on.  Women that went through some of the toughest struggles in history and never lost heart and never were bullied into submission as to what the ‘ role of a women is’ ( women being beings that should only be heard and not seen, only good for producing children)  I want to celebrate women that broke away from that oppression and stereotype and formed a new legacy for women.

 I want to observe your Rosa Parks who fought for civil rights and dared to challenge the system of that time and paid the price and yet made billions of people question the racial segregation in America. Another group of women I want to celebrate this evening is the women of SA that in ’56 took a stand against the pass law systems and went marching to the union building to the then Gen Prime Minister Strijdom and stood silently for 30 minutes many with children on their backs and broke silence only to sing you strike a women you strike a rock ( wath’intu mfazi wathint’ imbokodo)  I want to celebrate women how did not turn a bind eye when they saw that the injustice happening in their country I want to celebrate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi ( DSSK)  a women from a small country called Burma because of her voice she was detained 21 years and 15 of those under house arrest, she was only released in 2010. A woman whose heart for her people cost her, her liberty, a woman so small yet feared by military because she knows the power she has as a woman. Her voice.  I celebrate these women because in my own struggles this is were I draw my own strength in them and many more that I have not mentioned tonight, women that face adversaries much greater that those faces by us everyday. Women that have paved a way for us to all have a fair shot at a fight out there.

Tonight I call on all of you to draw your strength from each other, put on your battle armor and be an inspiration that I draw my strength from, be a force to be reckoned with in your homes, work place and life in general. 

As Michelle Obama said in her speech when she was addressing women in Africa she said that the battle is still fierce it’s time for women to go out there and fight against inequality in the work place, “be women that will transform inequalities and abolition hunger in this country, women that will show the world that HIV is preventable and should never be a source of shame, women that will show that women are no longer second class citizens, women that will stand up and says  that violence in any form in any place including the home is a human rights violation”. As I conclude I leave you with the words of Maya Angelou  “Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”

Thank you and have a great evening.