ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 2, No. 32, 8 - 15 August 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Letter from the President: Gender equality the litmus test for social change * Government Performance: Women benefit as frontiers of poverty are pushed back * Women in the struggle II: Lilian Ngoyi: The woman who marched on Strijdom's door --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Gender equality the litmus test for social change This week our publication date coincides with National Women's Day. This year this important national public holiday assumes special significance because on this day we will be laying to rest the remains of Sarah Baartman. We commented on this important matter in an earlier Letter. We must also celebrate the triumph of the outstanding athlete, Natalie du Toit. We extend to the women of our country the congratulations and best wishes of our people as a whole. As we all join in celebration of Women's Day, we should also refocus on the task ahead of us of advancing the agenda for the emancipation of women. By succeeding to include the objective of the creation of a non-sexist society in our national constitution, we ensured that democratic South Africa as a whole commits itself to the centrally important goal of gender equality. Accordingly, all of us have work to do to realise this objective. During the course of our struggle against the apartheid system, correctly, we said that the emancipation of women was a defining feature of our democratic revolution. We said that a true democracy had to guarantee us our national emancipation and national equality, as well women's emancipation and gender equality. We pointed to the centrality of the struggle for gender equality by drawing attention to the triple oppression of women in our country. Again correctly, we said that the majority of the women of South Africa are oppressed and exploited on the basis of race, class and gender. This triple burden defined them as the worst affected by the oppressive apartheid system, more than their male counterparts. The progress we make in the genuine emancipation of the women of our country should therefore serve as a litmus test of the advance we are making towards fundamental social transformation. Failure to move forward towards gender equality can only mean that we are not advancing significantly towards the creation of a new South Africa. On the occasion of National Women's Day, we need to say this proudly that, during the eight years of our liberation, we have taken important strides forward towards the achievement of the objective of the emancipation of women. This progress can be expressed in concrete and measurable ways. The women of our country would themselves attest to the advances that have been made. Nevertheless, we must also make the point that in many essential ways, it is still correct for us to say that our women continue to suffer from triple oppression. The racial disparities of the past persist and with them the continued suffering of those that suffered from colonial and apartheid oppression. As an important component part of the working people of our country, the women of our country are also engaged in a continuous struggle for a living wage, permanently to escape from the terrible condition of poverty. The struggle for the eradication of poverty remains one of the central tasks of our movement and society. In many areas of our national life, the women of our country continue to be discriminated against, whether as a result of historical patriarchal relations, unequal relations at work, inadequate access to education, skills and professions, and so on. Correctly, we have insisted that the matter of the emancipation of women should be integrated in all our activities because gender oppression and discrimination occur in virtually all areas of social activity. A disturbing element in our continuing struggle for the emancipation of women is that we have not succeeded forcefully to project within the national consciousness the objectives we pursue. To some extent, the call for gender equality does not adequately express the goals we have to pursue. The emancipation of women must mean that we free the women of our country from poverty. Among other things, this means that our educational and human resource development programmes must pay particular attention both to the girl child as well as young and older women. The provision of skills required in the production of wealth and economic activity in general, is fundamental to the achievement of the goal of ensuring that the women have access to incomes on a sustained basis. We must ensure that these human resource development programmes are relevant to the developmental possibilities in the areas in which the women live. For example, for a long period already, because of the migrant labour system, women have constituted a larger proportion of the adult population in the areas of subsistence agriculture. Our training programmes must respond to this reality. These areas therefore need both normal schools and facilities for further education. Some of this further education should be conducted directly at the places of economic activity. This would be true, for instance, of extension services in agriculture. Furthermore, as these rural women engage more and more in ordinary economic activities, the more pronounced will be the need to provide the possibility for the care of children who are still too young to attend normal school. Again, we mention all these matters because they are fundamental to the achievement of the goal of the emancipation of women. Others that are of direct relevance to this matter are such issues as women workers in commercial agriculture and the place of women in areas that fall under traditional authorities. In addition to the matter of skills, we must also work to ensure that the women have the necessary resources, including access to credit, to enable them to engage in productive economic activity. All these emphasise the importance of ensuring that the women in the countryside are freed from various burdens they have always carried. The provision of clean water and sanitation, good nutrition, health facilities and electricity, are therefore fundamental to the struggle for the emancipation of women. So also are other elements of the infrastructure, including roads and telecommunications. Similar observations can be made with regard to women in the urban areas. These would also include questions of equal access to skills training, equal work for equal pay, attention to the situation of domestic workers and adequate provision for maternity leave. The all-round upliftment of the majority of the women of our country means that we must focus especially on the development and empowerment of the workingwomen. These constitute the overwhelming majority of the women of our country. To ensure their gender emancipation means that our society as a whole must work to free them from poverty and underdevelopment, from ignorance, marginalisation and disempowerment. Unless we achieve these goals, we cannot speak of the emancipation of the women of South Africa. We have to work hard to promote a proper understanding of this matter by our society as a whole. Naturally, the matter does not end with our workingwomen. It must also extend to other levels of social activity, including government, business and the professions. Again, we come back to the matter of education, training, human resource development and empowerment of women to create the basis for the achievement of gender equality in these areas of human endeavour. Of equally great importance in this regard is the central question of the access of women to decision-making centres of power. This means that we have to engage in a conscious struggle against the entrenched and reactionary concept that the woman's place is in the kitchen. As part of that struggle, our society must make a deliberate effort to discriminate in favour of women to enable them to join these centres of power. This conscious intervention is necessitated by the fact that it is natural that those who exercise power will seek both to maintain themselves in power, and reproduce the power relations in which they have an objective interest. They place themselves in the position in which they can argue, forever, that those who are excluded from power do not have the experience properly to discharge the responsibilities that derive from the exercise of power, and should therefore be excluded. Their social position obliges them to adopt conservative rather than revolutionary positions. Only a revolutionary intervention can succeed to break this mould that seeks to conserve the past and block the introduction of the new. It is in this context that it is correct that we set quotas to ensure that we actually advance towards gender equity in terms of the decision-making processes in our society. The important struggle we must continue to wage, to end violence against women, is a critical part of the historic effort to change the power relations in our society. Once more, the national, class and gender oppression of women exposes them especially to the use of force against them by those who dominate them, who have inherited a backward social ideology that endows the oppression of women with the attributes of a law of nature. As fighters for the liberation of our country, we know that we can only achieve the goals we have set ourselves for the emancipation of women through struggle. I am certain that there are very few in our country that would stand up and say they are opposed to the transformation of South Africa into a non-sexist and a non-racist society. Yet we know that those who benefited from racist rule do not hesitate to oppose all practical measures to build a non-racist society, including through such measures as affirmative action, the deracialisation of the economy, the restructuring of property relations and the transformation of the public service. The more we focus successfully on the central issue of women's emancipation, the harder will be the resistance we will have to confront. The struggle continues and must continue. The return of Sarah Baartman to the land of her birth is an affirmation of the humanity and dignity of the Khoi people and Africans as a whole. It is an affirmation of the humanity and dignity of Khoi women and African women as a whole. As we lay her to rest, we must make the commitment that we will not allow that the black woman continues to be used and abused by those intent on the perpetuation of the practice of human inhumanity to other human beings. Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE Women benefit as frontiers of poverty are pushed back South African women have much to celebrate this National Women's Day as government continues to push back the frontiers of poverty. Since women have lower levels of income than men, have fewer opportunities for education and economic advancement, and are most severely affected by disease and poor nutrition, they have most to gain from social and economic development. Following its mid-year lekgotla, held on the eve of women's month, Cabinet concluded that government was on track to implement programmes that it had set itself at the beginning of the year. While this progress was welcome, it said government was under no illusions that the challenges facing the country were "massive". The Lekgotla noted that across all areas of service provision, there has been steady progress in the reducing the number of citizens without access to basic services. Of the 9.3 million South Africans that have been given access to running water since 1994, 300,000 of these have been since April this year. Such progress is critical not only to improving the quality of life for households and combatting water-borne disease. It also has a profound impact on the time available for women to engage in other activities, including income-generating activities. Women in rural and peri-urban areas spend, on average, over an hour every day fetching water. In a statement issued after the Lekgotla, Cabinet said good progress has been made on the prevention of communicable diseases. The fight against malaria is gaining ground, as revealed by the June survey in Northern KwaZulu Natal; and there are signs that tuberculosis is being contained. It said more intensive work needs to be done to ensure cholera outbreaks are eliminated in KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape. There were welcome indications from antenatal surveys that government's HIV/AIDS awareness campaign could be starting to have a positive impact on the prevalence of HIV among some age groups. "However, much more work needs to be done, in partnership among all sectors of society," it said. All the anchor projects in the nodes identified as part of the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) are being implemented. This programme will see coherent development and poverty alleviation taking place in a number of key rural districts. These projects will have direct benefits for rural women. Progress is slower in the urban nodes, with only half of the anchor projects operational. Cabinet agreed to identify new rural nodes and address weaknesses in the urban areas. However, the programme to tackle poverty is not limited to the provision of services and urban and rural development. Cabinet discussed a range of medium-term measures which have as their starting point the need to ensure that as many South Africans as possible have the opportunity to work. The Lekgotla therefore agreed to have discussions during August on a comprehensive employment-creation strategy before taking firm decisions on steps that need to be taken. Detailed proposals would be finalised by January on a massive expanded public works programme, which will include partnership with the private sector. Government agreed on measures to improve its assistance to small business, including training, technological support, the formation of a Small Business Advisory Board, the setting up of a micro-finance institution and infrastructure that takes into account the location and needs of entrepreneurs. These issues, all of which impact on the economic empowerment of women, will form part of government's input into preparations for the Growth and Development Summit, which is now proposed to take place in the beginning of 2003. Cabinet examined the proposals of the Committee of Inquiry into Comprehensive Social Security and comments from the public. Further work is being done to examine increasing the age of child grant beneficiaries, as well as massive expansion of the school nutrition programme. The campaign to register all who are eligible for the child grant and other social grants will be intensified. While progress has been made "across the board" in the fight against crime, including greater public confidence in the security agencies, government is taking special measures to tackle violence against women. Special projects will be introduced in 128 police station areas which together account for half of the reported cases of rape. These projects, which will be implemented jointly with the Social Sector Cluster, will include an increase in the number of Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Units, as well as victim support programmes, public awareness campaigns and an improvement in overall socio-economic conditions. For these efforts to succeed, however, South African women and men need to get involved, in the spirit of letsema, in working towards a better life for all: "Overall, the central message from the lekgotla is that we are on course; and if all of us lend a hand, we can achieve even better results, faster." --------------------------------------------------------------------- WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE II Lilian Ngoyi: The woman who marched on Strijdom's door The historic women's march of 9 August 1956 will always be closely associated with the name of Lilian Ngoyi. In her dual capacity as ANC Women' s League President and president of the Federation of South African Women, Ngoyi led more than 20,000 women of all races on a march to the Union Buildings, then the seat of the apartheid government. Described by Ezekiel Mphahlele in an 1956 article in Drum as "the most talked-of women in politics", Ngoyi was a leading figure in the African National Congress in the crucial 1950s and a central figure in the struggle for women's emancipation. Ngoyi was the first woman elected to the ANC National Executive Committee and the first women to be awarded Isitwalandwe, the highest award of the liberation movement. Born in 1991 near Pretoria, Lilian Masediba Ngoyi was condemned by family poverty to cut short her education and to work in a variety of menial jobs. Angered by the exploitation she had experienced as a worker in a clothing factory, Ngoyi became an active member of the Garment Workers Union, and was later elected to its executive. In 1952, inspired by the many young people volunteering to defy unjust laws and face arrest and prosecution, Ngoyi joined the ANC. A year after joining the movement, Ngoyi was elected to the NEC and to the position of ANC Women' s League president. She helped launch the Federation of South African Women, becoming first its vice-president, then later President. Writing in Sechaba in 1982, the year Ngoyi was posthumously awarded Isitwalandwe, Hilda Bernstein ascribed this meteoric rise within the movement to the combined forces of "the thrust of historical circumstance, and the power of Ma-Ngoyi's personality". "She stepped into these positions of leadership with the same simple, straight-forward approach with which she had faced her life. Her political understanding was based on harsh experience and acute observation. To this she brought her own gifts, a vital and dynamic personality with a flair for passionate expression, able to move an audience to tears or laughter," Bernstein wrote. Mphahlele described her as a brilliant orator: "She can toss an audience on her little finger, get men grunting with shame and a feeling of smallness, and infuse everyone with renewed courage." In 1954, together with Dora Tamane, she left South Africa without a passport to attend a World Congress of Women in Switzerland. She visited several socialist countries and the sites of Nazi extermination camps in Germany. Back in South Africa, Ngoyi led the 20,000 women to the Union Buildings to protest against the pass laws. Carrying thousands of petitions, she was the one who knocked on the door of the then Prime Minister JG Strijdom - which remained closed. Having been several times arrested and imprisoned for her political activities, she was charged with treason in late 1956, along with 156 other leaders. The trial proceedings were dragged out for more than four years, throughout which she was imprisoned, enduring 71 days of solitary confinement. Despite her eventual acquittal Ngoyi received her first banning orders, prohibiting her from attending meetings, confining her to where she lived, and preventing her from speaking in public. "For 18 years this brilliant and beautiful women spent most of her time in a tiny house, silenced, struggling to earn money by doing sewing, and with her great energies totally suppressed," Bernstein wrote. Ngoyi died in her Orlando home on 13 March 1980 at the age of 68. Over 2,000 people attended her funeral service, which lasted four hours, at the Methodist Church in Orlando East. Addressing the service. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, then Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, urged black women to lead the struggle: "Sisters, mothers, women, our liberation is in your hands." More Information: Biographies of Lilian Ngoyi http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/people/lngoyi.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2002/at32.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html