For media images and interview requests please contact: Zikhona Jafta at mediaofficer@iziko.org.za
Cape Town, South Africa — Iziko Museums of South Africa invites the public to join us in commemorating Women’s Day on Saturday, 9 August 2025. To mark this historic occasion, Iziko Museums will offer free entry to selected museums and host a series of special exhibitions and events that spotlight the contributions of women across generations. This year marks 69 years since more than 20,000 women of all races and background marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. They stood united in protest against unjust apartheid pass laws. Their courage and resilience continue to inspire the nation’s pursuit of justice, equality, and freedom.
Iziko Museums recognise the sisters, mothers, aunties, gogos’ and those fulfilling these roles. You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock (Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo) – more than an echo of the past; a modern-day mantra of women across all walks of life, who today continue to encounter challenges of discrimination, inequality and abuse. This Women’s Day, we remember the past, celebrate the present, and envision a future where all women thrive
Installation view: For Thirty Years Next to His Heart 1990 artwork part of the There’s Something I Must tell you exhibition at Iziko South African National Gallery © Nigel Pamplin
Visitors can expect:
Live performance by the Boston City Singers (BCS), at 11:00, Whale Well at the Iziko South African Museum. The performance forms part of the Global Voices Tour – a cultural exchange programme during which the members collaborate and engage with ensembles from across the host country. Boston City Singers provides the highest level of creative youth development opportunities to young people, ages 4 – 18, with programmes that inspire personal journeys, bridge opportunity gaps, celebrate diversity, and foster goodwill. Their strengths lie in an unwavering commitment to social justice and acceptance of differences across socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and gender identity. The Tour Choir is a premier ensemble. They study an expansive repertoire in several languages and from many different traditions and perform often throughout their region and around the world. Recent tours have included Ireland, Croatia, Bosnia and Czech Republic, Argentina, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Artist walkabout and public talk at the Iziko South African National Gallery: Rewriting the Script: A new context for activism – an afternoon of reflection, dialogue, and remembrance, from 14:00 until 16:00. The event begins with a walkabout of There’s something I must tell you, led by artist Sue Williamson, followed by an intergenerational panel discussion moderated by Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. The conversation brings together artist Sue Williamson; award-winning performer and writer Buhle Ngaba; and Idrissa Ebrahim, daughter of anti-apartheid leader Naz Gool- Ebrahim and a recent collaborator on Williamson’s new six-channel installation Don’t let the sun catch you crying, featured in the exhibition.
Rooted in shared commitments to voice action, the discussion will reflect on how women today can make their voices heard. Ngaba, whose grand-aunt Ruth Mompati was photographed by Williamson in the All Our Mothers series, brings a deeply personal lens to her work in performance and storytelling; Ebrahim offers insight into the lived legacy of political resistance; and Williamson draws on decades of making work that honours and centres women’s histories.
Space is limited please book online https://bit.ly/Iziko_SueWilliamsonDiscussion
The event concludes with tea served in the gallery atrium.
Exhibition highlights:
Motherhood: Paradox and Duality – Iziko South African National Gallery
Motherhood – one of the most profound yet paradoxical human experiences – a societal cornerstone that influences economies, politics and cultural structures; fierce and tender, intimate yet universal, celebrated yet constrained by societal norms. Spanning centuries, Motherhood: Paradox and Duality showcases works from historical paintings to contemporary pieces. The exhibition, curated by Andrea Lewis, unites over 70 artists across diverse media and time periods to challenge, redefine and expand our understanding of what it means to mother in a rapidly shifting world.
ISAM200: A story of change – Iziko South African Museum
A compelling visual journey through time featuring objects that embody the museum’s 200 years of evolving practice of collection, research and ethical reflection – capturing the rich and complex narratives of scientific exploration, cultural heritage and the intricate relationship between science and society.
New Exhibitions
The Iziko Slave Lodge will be open from 09:00 until 16:00. The opening will provide visitors the opportunity to view the latest exhibition.
The Hermanus ‘Ngxukumeshe’ Matroos Room and Galant Gallery in the contemporary history wing of the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum explore late and post-slavery periods. Highlighting narratives of resistance and liberation, these spaces connect past and present, focusing on Hermanus Matroos’ cross-cultural impact and Galant van de Caab’s uprising for freedom. The Galant uprising highlights the quest for universal freedom, showcasing rural slavery’s isolation and suffering, vividly depicted in contemporary art. Hermanus Matroos’ story extends the slavery narrative into the Eastern Cape, linking slaves, Khoekhoe, Xhosa communities, colonial conquest, and resistance.
Uitgeskryf in Grond is a powerful feminist exhibition that reclaims the erased histories of Namakwa womxn and amaXhosa migrant men in the Namakwa copper belt. Through archival artefacts, poetic storytelling, and community-rooted research, the exhibition traces how settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and extractivism violently excluded these communities from land, memory, and belonging. It spotlights the gendered labour of Namakwa womxn who held their communities and families together in mining settlements, yet remained invisible in political and historical narratives, and the fractured lives of amaXhosa men recruited under apartheid-era labour regimes. The exhibition honours the enduring resistance and survival of those written out of official histories, and insists that their voices are central to imagining just and decolonial futures.
*Free entrance on Women’s Day, Saturday 9 August (only) includes the Iziko South African National Gallery, Iziko South African Museum, Iziko Slave Lodge and the Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum.
*Excludes the Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome, Groot Constantia, the Castle of Good Hope, as well as Iziko museums normally closed on Saturdays.
