Above: Slangkop lighthouse at dusk, Kommetjie coastline, Cape Town.

The emancipation of South Africa's women needs to be speedily advanced, President Thabo Mbeki said Friday in his salute to the fairer sex.

Speaking on the eve of National Women's Day, he said the day provided an opportunity to salute South Africa's women and to recommit to the constitutional obligation to transform South Africa into a non-sexist country. According to Census 2001, women make up 52,2 percent of the country's population. "This communicates the clear message that when we call for a better life for all, this means that what we do should have the larger impact on the women, who constitute the majority of our population," Mbeki said.

Organisations have called on South Africans to spare a thought on Saturday for the thousands of abused women and children. The SA National Council for Child Welfare's director Andre Kalis said on Friday statistical data for the years 2000-2002 indicated that 69 percent of children traumatised by sexual abuse were girls between the ages of 10 and 14. "At this age they are innocent and powerless and most suffer in silence. "We cannot celebrate the strength and beauty of our country's women without sparing a thought for our female children who still bear the brunt of sexual abuse," he said.

National Women's Day commemorates a national march on the Union Buildings on August 9, 1956, when women of all races petitioned against the country's former pass laws that required black people to carry a document all the time "prove" that they were allowed to enter a "white area". The women, signed a petition addressed to the then prime minister, DF Malan, demanding the withdrawal of the legislation. The document stated that for hundreds of years black people had suffered under the most bitter law of all -- the pass law. It said: "Raids, arrests, loss of pay, long hours at the pass office, weeks in the cells awaiting trial, forced farm labour -- this is what the pass laws have brought to African men. Punishment and misery -- not for a crime, but for the lack of a pass. "We African women know too well the effect of this law upon our homes, our children. We, who are not African women, know how our sisters suffer. "We shall not rest until we have won for our children their fundamental rights of freedom, justice, and security."