We walk at midnight, because we can!
We are currently walking once a month, in different neighbourhoods of Cape Town, South Africa.
What is WWM about?
WWM started small, 22 women walking in a relatively safe middle-class suburban neighbourhood. Since the first walk, the initiative has gained immense traction and currently stands at over 300 members. The news of the walk flows organically, through word of mouth and social media, and to as many neighbourhoods as possible. New women members join each round, and volunteer to host the walk in their neighbourhood. Since August 2022, on a monthly basis, WWM members have walked the streets of some very different neighbourhoods – Atlantic Seaboard, City Centre, Harfield Village, Khayelitsha (Thasompo Village), Langa, Mowbray, Muizenberg, Salt River, Woodstock.
What do we aim for?
On August 18th, 2022, a little after 9 pm, 28 women gathered on a street in a neighbourhood in Cape Town. Some knew each other from encounters at work, university and the neighbourhood, but many others were simply strangers to each other. At exactly 9 pm the entire neighbourhood had gone into load shedding. The streets were pitch dark, filled with just whispers and anxious laughs of strangers willing to walk for hours in the streets of one of the most unsafe cities in the world. We were to walk for approximately two hours, navigating streets that we as women had never dared to walk at night, and seldom in the day.
WWM is a very simple and yet, critical initiative, especially in a country like South Africa, commonly referred to as the rape capital of the world, with over 10,000 rape cases reported in the first quarter of 2023. It is about building a community, a space of safety for women, where we can walk, sing, talk, breathe…. exist and access the night without fear. We walk together because we have never been able to walk alone without a sense of fear, without holding on to whatever we feel will protect us from the predator lurking around, and without our hearts beating in our mouths. Together we reclaim the night, and we reclaim the streets of our city. There are no formal mechanisms of safety and no police protection. Women walking together are each other’s safety.
Reclaiming the streets and taking back the night through protests have happened, in big and small scales, across the world. These protests movements are often ignited by an acute act of injustice, often gender and sexuality-based violence. WWM is, however, not an organised protest. It is not a demonstration or a march. It is simply women walking together. We do this for pleasure. The joy of walking at night. We do not carry any banners or signs, we do not raise slogans. We just walk together. And in this we find our first breath of resistance, our claim to our streets and to justice.
Our Story
Although there is a growing recognition in South Africa that the scale of violence against women and girls has reached pandemic proportions, responding to cases of violence is just a one pronged solution to a multi-pronged problem. What is direly needed are for these responses to be complemented by strategies that disrupt the normalisation of this violence without putting more restrictions on female mobility. The normalisation of violence in public spaces shape women’s experience of city spaces, as well as city planning and public transport policies and structures. Women are simply not expected to inhabit public spaces, especially at night, and those that have to or want to are taught the norm through violet means. WWM aims to disrupt this by normalising women walking the streets at night.
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As there is no singular experience of being a woman in the city, but is simultaneously shaped by economic class, race, sexuality, and ability, these walks will need to spread to as many neighbourhoods as possible. This is particularly critical in South Africa, where stark spatial divides continue to persist post-Apartheid. As a sense of safety and confidence emerges and grows from the strength of the group and from demystifying the night, WWM aims to eventually spread to all cities in South Africa.