Women are too strong to be ignored —Mandela’s widow

Mrs. Graca Machel, widow of former South Africa President, Nelson Mandela has said that women are too strong to be ignored in any society and they must therefore rise up and take their rightful positions as they won’t get it on a platter of gold.

Machel spoke in Lagos over the weekend on the topic ‘Breaking Barriers’ at a Women’s Power Lunch, a programme organized by Murtala Muhammed Foundation (MMF), a non-profit organization founded in honour of the memory and in furtherance of the ideals of the late General Murtala Muhammed, the former Nigerian Head of State.

Graca Machel, widow of Nelson Mandela, former South African President, speaking at the event.

In her words: “This precisely is the transformative ways in which African women have to act. They do not need to underestimate the powers they have but to always use the powers positively knowing it is our right. We are not asking anything that we are not entitled to. But we need to be organized and we need to know how to do it”.

She pointed out that women need to organize themselves if this objective must be achieved saying “ten years from now, we need to begin to take the African woman to another stage. We have to define the target of what we need to change. What we are and what we are doing is not good enough because it is leaving millions behind. And because of that, we have to restrategise knowing exactly what we want to change”.