Women's emancipation must be central to transformation

Next week on Thursday, August 9th, we will celebrate our National Women's Day, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the women's march of 1956. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to salute the women of our country. At the same time, we would like to reiterate the commitment of the ANC to continue to pursue the objectives of women's emancipation and gender equality.

The struggle for equality and respect for the dignity of each and every South African is central to the tasks of our national liberation movement, the ANC. This relates not only to questions of race and nationality, but also to the important issues of gender and disability.

Reflecting our movement's commitment to equality in general, including gender equality, the Freedom Charter states: "Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws;." and "The rights of all people shall be the same, regardless of race, colour or sex;."

We marked the 72nd anniversary of the ANC, in 1984, as the Year of the Women. In the January 8th Statement of that year, presented by the late Oliver Tambo, our National Executive Committee said: "It will be our special task this year to organise and mobilise our womenfolk into a powerful, united and active force for revolutionary change. This task falls on men and women alike - all of us together as comrades in the struggle. We wish to stress the need, at the present hour, for the emergence on the political scene of a women's movement that is politically and organisationally united. Our struggle needs and demands this potentially mighty force.

"Our struggle will be less than powerful and our national and social emancipation can never be complete if we continue to treat the women of our country as dependent minors and objects of one form of exploitation or another. Certainly no longer should it be that a woman's place is in the kitchen. In our beleaguered country, the woman's place is the battlefront of struggle."

In an earlier statement at the end of 1983, announcing that the following year would be observed as the Year of the Women, our movement said: "The liberation of the land of our birth and all its people will materialise as a genuinely popular victory on the basis of the involvement of the masses, including the women in their millions, as a conscious and active part of the anti-racist and anti-colonial democratic movement of South Africa. One of the fundamental tasks that this process of national liberation confronts is the liberation of the women of our country from their triple oppression on the grounds of sex, class and colour."

We are proud of the fact that today, as a result of the struggle the masses of our people waged, including the women, our country's constitution includes the objective of the transformation of ours into a non-sexist society. This constitutional provision means that our country as a whole, including the government, has an obligation to ensure that this objective is realised.

Today, we are involved in a complex and all-encompassing struggle for the reconstruction and development of our country. The fact of the matter is that we are confronted by the reality that everything has to change. Coming as we are out of three-and-half centuries of colonialism and apartheid, we cannot but seek the fundamental transformation of the society that had emerged out of those centuries of injustice.

Accordingly, what we are engaged in is a veritable revolution. Like all revolutions, for it to succeed, our new revolution requires that the masses of our people should be involved as "as a conscious and active part" of the movement for the fundamental renewal of our country. It is for this reason that whereas we have insisted that the revolutionary social processes in which we are engaged should be people-centred with regard to their outcomes, we have also emphasised that these processes should be people-driven.

But again, as Oliver Tambo said in 1984, "our national and social emancipation can never be complete if we continue to treat the women of our country as dependent minors and objects of one form of exploitation or another".

The long period of colonialism and apartheid imposed a harsh life of oppression and exploitation especially on the black women of our country. As the 1983 ANC statement we quoted, this was triple oppression and exploitation on the grounds of gender, race and class. The reality is that the black women of our country became the worst victims of white minority domination and exploitation. As a consequence of this, when we speak today of the challenge of the eradication of the legacy of apartheid, we must focus, critically, on the impact of this legacy especially on the black women of our country. Where, today, we target the issue of the eradication of poverty, we must focus on the eradication of poverty among women.

Where we address issues of availability of productive resources, skills, jobs and other economic opportunities, as well as employment equity, to ensure the economic upliftment of all our people, we have to pay special attention to the impact of these programmes on women.

As we concentrate on the challenge of ending the unacceptably high levels of violence in our country, we must focus on the important issue of violence against women, including rape and domestic violence. When we conduct work to translate the objective of health for all into reality, we must concentrate on the challenge of improving the health of the women of our country, many of whom are afflicted by diseases of poverty.

As we formulate and implement policies and programmes to address the issue of the creation of a non-racial society, yet another central objective expressed in our national constitution, we have to integrate within this, the objective of non-sexism. This is so because it is not possible to deal with the challenge of creating a non-racial society without attending also to the task of building a non-sexist country.

The correct determination that the women of our country suffered from gender, race and class oppression and exploitation points precisely to the fact that the emancipation of women must include their emancipation from racist oppression and exploitation. From all this, and more that we can say, it is clear that Oliver Tambo was correct when he said "our national and social emancipation can never be complete if we continue to treat the women of our country as dependent minors and objects of one form of exploitation or another".

We must take pride in the work we have done since 1994 to ensure that the emancipation of women is addressed as an integral part of our programme for reconstruction and development. Progress has been achieved in many areas. Apart from the provisions in the constitution and the Bill of Rights that relate to this important matter, various laws have also been passed to move us further forward towards the birth of a non-sexist society.

Our government also adopted the Beijing Platform of Action. At the same time, we have our own policy framework entitled "South Africa's National Policy Framework for Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality". We have also acceded to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Other policy positions, such as the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service, also address the issue of gender equality.

Various government programmes have also had a positive impact on the emancipation of women from gender, race and class oppression and exploitation and, therefore, the lightening of the social burden on women that resulted from this oppression and exploitation. In this context, there has been correct insistence that we ensure that we mainstream the strategic issue of women's emancipation and not sideline it into a peripheral ghetto. This means that as we worked on all our transformation programmes, we had to ensure that these programmes have among their central objectives, gender equality and the emancipation of women.

It is clear that these programmes, including those directed at addressing the needs of the people in various areas such as health, housing, education, nutrition, infrastructure and so on, have impacted positively on improving the condition of especially the black women of our country. The composition of our national, provincial and local leadership with regard to the legislature, the executive and the judiciary has also changed for the better, in favour of gender equality. Some progress has also been made in the private sector.

However, despite all this progress, it is clear that we could move forward faster with regard to this strategic task. Among other things, this requires that the government should further improve the machinery it has put in place to implement the policies that have been adopted. But perhaps most important for the achievement of the strategic task of the national liberation movement of gender equality and the emancipation of women is the mobilisation of women into united action for the realisation of these objectives.

In 1984, Oliver Tambo said: "It will be our special task this year to organise and mobilise our womenfolk into a powerful, united and active force for revolutionary change. This task falls on men and women alike - all of us together as comrades in the struggle. We wish to stress the need, at the present hour, for the emergence on the political scene of a women's movement that is politically and organisationally united. Our struggle needs and demands this potentially mighty force."

So must we act together today to build such a mighty force, to tackle the revolutionary task of the reconstruction of our country into a truly non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous country.

World Conference against racism

Drawing on ninety-years of non-racial struggle in South Africa

As world leaders and non-governmental organisations gather in Durban in less than a month's time for the World Conference against Racism, South Africa's experience of racial oppression and non-racial struggle is expected to prove a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate around racism and intolerance globally.

The non-racial traditions of the liberation movement led by the African National Congress represent a powerful response to racism and discrimination relevant not only in South Africa, but in other contexts across the worlds. The ANC's approach to non-racialism has evolved over ninety years of struggle. Its defining feature is seeking to build the future in the present through united action.

In the course of colonialism and apartheid our people resisted assaults on their dignity, but did not surrender to the temptation of advocating black racial domination. Instead they reached resolutely and optimistically for the antithesis of apartheid - the ideal of non-racialism.

Few periods in history provide a better illustration of racism as a system of power relations than the Atlantic slave trade, the conquest and colonisation of Africa, and the apartheid system in South Africa. Racist ideology regarded Africans as less than human, providing moral sanction for these crimes against humanity. Among the broader public in the respective societies, racist ideology also served to legitimise the actions of its perpetrators.

The colonisation of Africa was an important element in the first period of globalisation and European industrial expansion. Colonialism facilitated the unfettered extraction of Africa's rich natural resources and created markets for Europe's manufactured goods. In 1884 and 1885, European powers met in Berlin to divide Africa among themselves. At that meeting, King Leopold of Belgium was given personal sovereignty over a territory in the Congo basin, several times the size of Europe. In his quest to reap profit from the global boom in demand for rubber, Leopold's commercial activities were estimated to have resulted in the death of between ten and twenty million Congolese. That is a number almost equal to the number of Africans forcibly relocated to the Americas. This is one chapter in a history of many genocides perpetrated by the colonial powers: by the Germans in Namibia; by the Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America; by white settlers in North America; and by the Dutch and the British at the Cape, all of which had resulted in the annihilation of entire peoples. Taken together, conquest, colonisation and African slavery did indeed constitute an African holocaust.

Apartheid was also a crime against humanity. Extending from the park bench to regulation of the labour force, it sought to entrap South Africans within the confines of legislated racial categories. The purpose of this system was to perpetually subordinate black South Africans to the economic and political interests of whites, in order to guarantee the accumulation and maintenance of material wealth and cultural supremacy.

Three years after the defeat of Nazism and after the world community had embraced a universal human rights declaration, the white electorate in South Africa voted into office a party whose political platform was constitutionally sanctioned racial domination in the political, economic, social and cultural fields. South Africa thus became the last outpost of racist ideology, of racist practice and domination.

The response of South Africa's black majority was significant. Throughout its history the ANC has played a decisive role in nurturing and building a humanist response to the system that sought to deny the humanity of its people. The transition to democracy was the product of conscious human effort over many years. It is the result of the understanding by millions of South Africans that all of us, regardless of race and colour, are interdependent members of a common society. This in turn resulted from the effort expended over many years by the liberation movement to argue that black domination would be as evil as white domination.

The defining feature of our non-racial, non-sexist approach is that it seeks to build the future in the present. The act of mobilising people for change simultaneously breaks down the existing order and builds a new one. Our non-racialism does not involve the subordination of one culture to another. Diversity does not detract from our commonality: it enriches our unity. Our non-racialism acknowledges our history and the nature of our society: that black people in general, and Africans in particular, have been, and continue to be the victims of the consequences created by the apartheid social order. Building unity in the present in order to achieve a non-racial future could only occur as an act of black self-emancipation, with the African people taking the lead in their own liberation. This non-racial ethos is a profound expression of the broad African nationalism that has always been at the heart of the ANC.

The modern world has emerged from the painful histories of colonialism, slavery and apartheid. Yet the economic, social, political and ideological legacy continues to impact on relations between and within nations. The distribution of economic endowments has been decisively influenced by the positions racial communities and groups occupied in this historically determined hierarchy. The underdevelopment of the disadvantaged majority was the condition for the development of the privileged minority; the poverty of the oppressed groups was the condition for the relative wealth of the oppressor group.

The current process of globalisation threatens to further entrench the unequal distribution of resources in the world, both between and within societies. If approached correctly, however, the advent of a global economy and globalised society provides a unique opportunity to address the inequities generated by our shared history. For the first time in history we have the potential to act in genuine partnership as the nations of the world, to build non-racialism in action, by working together to ensure a better life for all.

This will only be successful, however, if the nations and peoples of the world are prepared to collectively acknowledge the past, change the present and build the future free from racism, discrimination and intolerance.

MORE INFORMATION:

• World Conference against Racism (WCAR)
• WCAR NGO Forum

Malaria

Southern Africa works together to fight preventable disease

A region-wide plan to combat malaria aims to reduced deaths from malaria in Southern Africa by half before the end of the decade. The SADC Malaria Plan, which was officially launched in Zimbabwe last week, is aimed at co-ordinating regional efforts for the control and prevention of malaria.

The plan specifies action from a regional to community level to control malaria within specified timeframes. While targets for reducing incidence of malaria will be member-state specific, the plan set the target of 50 percent reduction in malaria mortality by the end of 2010. It also states that the number of deaths should not be more than 0.5 percent of the total number of reported cases.

Malaria, unlike HIV/AIDS, is an old disease with known methods of control and treatment. Yet it still causes untold mortality and morbidity in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is recognised in Africa as a major challenge to our health systems and economies as a whole. In the SADC region alone, 14 million cases of malaria are reported every year. In some countries reports of malaria cases amount to between 25 and 40 percent of the total population.

In the Abuja Declaration on Roll Back Malaria in Africa, African Heads of State and Government noted "malaria cost Africa up to US$12 billion (about R96 billion) annually [and] those who suffer most are some of the continent' s most impoverished and malaria keeps them poor". They said malaria slowed economic growth in Africa by up to 1,3 percent a year, which indicates malaria is firmly a socio-economic issue. Health ministers in the SADC region have subsequently instituted a study of the socio-economic impact of malaria in the region specifically.

In South Africa, malaria occurs in low altitude areas of Mpumalanga, Northern Province and the north-eastern parts of KwaZulu Natal. Occasionally, limited transmission may develop in the North West and Northern Cape provinces along the Malopo and Orange Rivers. About 10 percent of South Africans live in malaria risk areas. Underdevelopment and poor infrastructure contribute to the vulnerability of these small rural towns and villages to the disease.

Malaria cases have increased steadily in the country since 1996 with the highest number of cases, at 61 447, reported in 1999/2000 malaria season. The increase in malaria cases is largely due to climatic conditions conducive to its spread, including the floods that afflicted the SADC region early last year.

Health Ministers from the flood affected countries - Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe - met in Maputo and formed a task team to advise on an emergency response to the threatening malaria epidemic caused by the floods. The task team produced the SADC Malaria Plan, which was adopted by Southern African Development Community health ministers in April.

At an inter-country level, the plan will harmonise policies, interventions and treatment; improve communication between member-states to achieve agreed goal; and efficient dissemination of information across borders. The plan aims to develop a regional epidemic forecasting system in collaboration with national meteorological services. It will be implemented in line with "achievable" targets set by the Abuja Declaration. The Declaration urged that by 2005 at least 60 percent of those suffering from malaria should have prompt access to affordable and appropriate treatment and 60 percent of those at risk from malaria, particularly women and children, should benefit from protective measures such as insecticide treated materials.

Malaria programmes have always enjoyed the highest political support in the region generally and South Africa has made a major contribution. It has contributed R5 million to the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative (LSDI) that is beginning to have a positive impact in cross-border malaria control between Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland. The southern parts of Mozambique are reported to have experienced a 43 percent reduction in the prevalence of malaria. In KwaZulu Natal areas that adjoin Swaziland and Mozambique, there has been a 70 percent reduction in the number of malaria cases and some of this achievement is due to the downstream effect of the LSDI concept.

On top of the R82 million budgeted in 2000/2001 for malaria, the South African cabinet injected an additional R39 million for scaling up the malaria control programme. The country has developed its malaria control infrastructure by purchasing 65 vehicles and constructing 25 malaria stations. Insectaries were upgraded and laboratories expanded. A geographical information system has been developed in the three provinces and maps can be produced indicating malaria distribution up to either village or household level.

Because of the reintroduction of DDT insecticide in KwaZulu Natal, decline in malaria cases has been so dramatic that other malaria-affected provinces will follow suit. The introduction of treated bed nets is gaining momentum with a project in place in KwaZulu Natal and projects planned for the other two provinces in the coming malaria season.

Introduction of rapid diagnostic tests at all health facilities has been a major success. Extensive training was also run in all three provinces for health workers on the management and effective treatment of malaria. Malaria awareness has been raised in affected areas and people with symptoms are able to seek treatment early. These efforts have contributed in reducing mortality rates, as delays in presentation and treatment were responsible for much of the 0.5 percent mortality rate in the country.

South Africa was able to give treatment to citizens from neighbouring countries. The award for the Best Malaria Control Programme given to South Africa during the Southern Africa Malaria Control annual meeting in Zimbabwe last week was in recognition of these efforts.

The New African Initiative, adopted by the OAU Heads of State Summit, recognises there can be no economic growth without healthy people. The UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS also endorsed the concept of health as a developmental issue, while the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS and Health has moved from initially aiming at addressing only HIV/AIDS and has incorporated tuberculosis, malaria and other related matters.

All these initiatives have succeeded in ensuring that malaria continues to gain the prominence that it needs. Internationally, there is recognition that malaria continues to take a heavy toll in Sub-Saharan Africa and that in some countries, it is still the leading cause of preventable deaths.

MORE INFORMATION:

• Statistics on malaria in South Africa

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