Forward with the struggle for women's emancipation

This week we celebrate August 9th, our National Women's Day. This will give us an opportunity once more to salute the women of our country and renew our commitment to live up to the obligation contained in our national constitution, to transform South Africa into a non-sexist country.

Appropriately, the ANC Women's League will also hold its long delayed National Congress later in August, which is correctly observed by many in our movement and country as Women's Month.

The matter of the emancipation of women is central to the objectives of our movement. For a long time, we have espoused the position that the women of our country must be liberated from their triple race, class and gender oppression. We have also sought to make certain that the democratic government and state work vigorously to take our country further forward towards the achievement of the central strategic goal of the emancipation of women.

Because of the importance of this issue, the 51st National Conference of the ANC, held in Stellenbosch, adopted a new resolution on women. It resolved:

"That the ANC should continue to build a strong ANC Women's League (ANCWL).

"To reaffirm the ANC 50th National Conference resolutions focusing on the programmatic aspects of the eradication of gender oppression.

"To design a comprehensive strategy on our programme to build a non-sexist society and provide a guide for the integration of gender in all aspects of our policies and programmes.

"That the one third representation of women in all structures of the movement should be seen as a minimum, to be progressively increased in order to match the demographic profile of SA, coupled with political education and capacity building programmes.

"That the gender machinery and mechanisms should be strengthened and be consistent at all levels of the public and private sectors.

"That necessary legislation must be looked at to ensure one-third representation of women in all legislatures.

"That capacity building and skills development be actively pursued through the relevant skills development institutions and structures, including the SETAs.

"That the ANC must play a critical role in accelerating efforts to build a national women's movement.

"That the NEC strengthens disciplinary measures in the ANC to address the issues of sexual harassment, abuse and violence against women and children. In addition the NEC should establish a special committee under the National Disciplinary Committee composed of gender-sensitive persons to deal with such offences.

"That the Sexual Offences Act must be finalised as a matter of urgency.

"To take forward discussions with a view to effect amendments and changes to customary and religious practices, including laws that govern the right to inherit, which are inconsistent with the Bill of Rights and other laws of our country.

"To explore the establishment of a developmental women's fund, and strengthen initiatives such as the Malibongwe Project to assist with creating an enabling environment for those women at the bottom end of the economy.

"That PAWO (Pan-African Women's Organisation) must be transformed and restructured in order to meet the current challenges women face on our continent such as those identified within the AU and NEPAD. The ANC further reaffirms the decision of our 50th Conference to host PAWO and to support the holding of the PAWO conference in SA.

"Encourage the ANCWL to develop a structured relationship with the Office on the Status of Women and the Commission on Gender Equality at national and provincial levels, through programmes that aim to reduce the impact of poverty on rural women, based on the principles of sustainability and empowerment.

"Target specific programmes to bring rural women into the mainstream of the economy."

As a movement we have an obligation to ensure that we follow up on all these matters, including those the 51st National Conference said were agreed at our Mafikeng 50th National Conference.

Quite correctly, this resolution deals with various areas of human activity, including the political, economic and social. It also mentions the important objective "to design a comprehensive strategy on our programme to build a non-sexist society and provide a guide for the integration of gender in all aspects of our policies and programmes". This seeks to address the demand "to mainstream" the gender question, rather than treat it as an "add-on".

Hopefully, the National Congress of the ANCWL will also focus on this challenge, to give further impetus to the work the ANC itself must do to implement the decisions of our National Conference. Work already done by the women of our country, such as at the recent conference held in Tshwane, categorised as "South African Women in Dialogue", have also contributed enormously to the achievement of this objective.

According to what has been released by Stats SA up to now, Census 2001 has provided us with much information on the women of our country, which should both further inspire us to do what needs to be done in general, and point the specific directions in which we have to make further advances.

The first point to make, relying on the Census 2001 information, is that we have larger numbers of females than males. The females constitute 52,2 percent of our population. This communicates the clear message that when we call for a better life for all, this means that what we do should have the larger impact on the women, who constitute the majority of our population.

Perhaps not surprisingly, three of our provinces have a proportion of females that is higher than the national average. These are Limpopo, with 54,6 percent, the Eastern Cape with 53,8 percent, and KwaZulu-Natal, with 53,2 percent. These are the provinces with the largest numbers of our rural population, the lowest levels of development, and big concentrations of poor people.

What this says is that the challenge of women's emancipation and empowerment, as visualised in the decisions of the National Conferences of the our movement, is most urgent exactly in these provinces, which are also the poorest. The poorest among these poor are women. More than any other, our provincial organisations in these areas have to make sure that they act vigorously on the issue of the emancipation of women.

If we take other figures, these will tell the story of gender discrimination in more direct terms. For instance, let us take the national figures of males and females aged 20 years and above, in the group covering those with no education to those who have completed primary school. There are 5,732,643 females in this category, and 4,512,064 males. Females therefore constitute 56 percent of those in this educational category, significantly above their proportion of our population as a whole.

Again if we take the three provinces of the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, we will see that women come out worse than the national average. In the category we are considering - being those with no education or education up to the end of primary school - the percentages, respectively, are 58 percent, 59,5 percent and 63 percent.

Interestingly, the figures at higher levels of education tell a different story. The national statistics relating to the educational range Grade 12/Std 10 and Higher, say that women constitute 51.4 percent, just below their proportion of our population as a whole.

In the three provinces we have been considering, the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, the respective proportions are 56 percent, 55 percent and 52.4 percent. This probably represents the higher rate of rural-urban migration by males. This emphasises the point that in these highly rural provinces, the burden of leadership with regard to the development challenges we face, must be carried largely by women.

These figures, relating to people with higher levels of education, also communicate the important message that perhaps the message about women's emancipation and gender equality is getting through to the masses of our people. This is resulting in more of our women becoming relatively highly educated, rather than dropping out of the educational system to do domestic work or find a husband at an early age.

Nevertheless, gender inequality shows itself when we consider the category, "occupation among the employed, aged 15-65". Let us first consider the occupations described in Census 2001 as "technicians and associated professionals, clerks, service workers, shop and market sales workers, and elementary occupations".

Nationally, women constitute 36.4 percent of these categories. They make up 29.5 percent of the category "legislators, senior officials and managers". With regard to the occupations "craft and related trades workers, and plant and machine operators and assemblers", the women constitute 14 percent of the national total of these skilled workers. On the other hand, they make up 42.6 percent of the occupation classified in Census 2001 as "professionals".

What these figures signify is that the educated and better-trained women in our country are largely concentrated in such professions as teaching and nursing, as well as jobs requiring lower skills levels. To that extent, the aggregate statistics that reflect levels of education from the matriculation level upwards, hide gross occupational gender imbalances, in favour of our male population.

These conclusions stand out even more starkly when we consider the majority section of our population described in Census 2001 as "Black Africans". Among the "black Africans", in the first category we considered, "technicians etc", the proportion of women stands at 52.3 percent. The figure in the second category, "legislators etc", is 30.0 percent, fractionally above the national average. For "crafts and related trades etc", the proportion is 12.6 percent. The figure for "professionals" is 44.0 percent.

In time, Stats SA will publish other information contained in Census 2001. Undoubtedly, this information will indicate both the progress we have made towards achieving the goal of gender equality and the emancipation of women, as well as the serious tasks still ahead of us.

What is certain is that as we celebrate our National Women's Day, we cannot be satisfied merely to proclaim - Ma libongwe igama lamakhosikazi! - as we will, and must. We must also commit ourselves to implement the decisions of our National Conferences on the gender question, and, in practice, do everything necessary to advance speedily towards the emancipation of the women of South Africa and the rest of Africa. Igama lamakhosikazi ma libongwe!

UDF Series I

The proud history of a mass resistance movement

Later this month, on 20 August, the ANC will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF), which played a leading role in organising and mobilising internal resistance to apartheid during most of the 1980s.

A number of activities have been planned to mark the occasion, including the publication of a special edition of the ANC's political journal, Umrabulo, which includes a number of current and historical articles on the UDF and its impact on the struggle for a democratic South Africa.

In the first of a series of articles which ANC Today will be running this month, we examine the origins of the UDF and the struggles it waged across the country.

The formation of the UDF arose out of the strategic approach of the ANC and the struggles being waged by communities and activists on the ground.

When asked, in 1984, whether the UDF was a creation of the ANC, then ANC President Oliver Tambo said the 700 organisations that belonged to the UDF were not created by the ANC.

"But the ANC has called on the people to organise themselves, whether they organise themselves into ping-pong clubs or whatever it is, but we said, organise and direct your attention and activity to freeing yourselves so that you become human beings and citizens of your own country," he said.

Writing in his book, Sunset at Midday, the late Govan Mbeki said the relationship between the ANC and the UDF can best be explained by looking at the ANC's change in strategy towards the end of the 1970s, which included "mass mobilisation . and the creation of the broadest possible national front for liberation".

"As a result of this review, the ANC since 1979 took on a number of tasks, including the establishment of mass organisations in the country, influencing those already formed and devising themes and slogans around which mass legal organisations could mobilise," he said.

In an article published in the latest edition of Umrabulo, ANC NEC member and former UDF vice president Frank Chikane, says the launch of the UDF was a direct result of a strategic decision by the liberation movement to intensify the levels of mass resistance inside the country. "As the armed struggle was escalated and the international campaign to isolate the regime gathered steam, the need for greater internal resistance became more and more urgent, although any link between the UDF and the ANC had to be publicly denied for security reasons," he says.

The immediate objectives of the UDF were to unite in opposition to the Tricameral parliament and the Koornhof Bills; to pressurise the apartheid regime to release the leadership of the people from prison, ; to unban liberation movements and people's organisations, ; allow South African exiles to return home, ; and to start meaningful negotiations to establish a free, non-racial, non-sexist democratic society, Chikane says.

"The genesis of the UDF was a call by the ANC in exile for all South Africans to form a united front to resist the regime which was becoming more repressive and brutal by the day in the run-up to the implementation of a new bogus Tricameral Parliament under a new South African constitution. In 1982, cadres of the movement within the country held quiet discussions and made secret preparations. In January 1983 the internal movement made the public call for the formation of a united democratic front to resist the new 1983 apartheid constitution," he says.

Yet the story goes back a little further, Chikane says. While the second wave of bannings of people's organizations in 1977 forced many activists to go underground, it also created new conditions for the development and growth of many grassroots organisations and community groups. The early 1980s also saw the growth of the labour movement, which together with community groups ultimately formed the base of the UDF when it was formed. While women, youth and students organisations formed the larger part of the front, the UDF was positioned so that many professional, religious and business organisations would also feel comfortable within a 'broad family' united around specific aims.

The strategy of the 'broad united front' was adopted because of its potential to unite the overwhelming majority of South Africans around the common objective of eliminating the apartheid system, while the membership of professional organisations, business associations and religious groupings afforded the front a certain level of security for activists to carry out their responsibilities.

The late Steve Tshwete, a former UDF president in the Border region, in a paper presented to the regional executive, said the UDF was, like other fronts elsewhere in the world, a mouth-piece of a number of organisations whose short and long term aspirations are given expression and authenticated in unity in action.

"Not a single one of those organisations has descended, ready-made, from outer space upon the democratic and peace-loving people of South Africa. On the contrary, these organisations are the direct product of the objective reality in a country that has gone strange to democracy.

"Though we cannot boast of any ideological homogeneity as a front, the organisations at our command are nonetheless committed to the ideal of a united, free, democratic and non-racial South Africa, in which the will of the people, not the will of a clique, shall bear sway. That is the primary thrust of the UDF," Tshwete said.

The rapid and exponential growth of the UDF was met by the brutal repression of the apartheid state. Chikane says this gave impetus to the establishment of proper operational mechanisms for the organisation. The so-called 'M Plan ' - originally devised by Nelson Mandela in the 1940s - took on a new meaning with the creation of street and block committees in townships and suburbs across the country. In many ways this system represented the best expression of participatory democracy and served as the most effective communications mechanism at the time when the repressive machinery of the regime was at its worst, Chikane says.

The implementation of the 1983 constitution, designed to consolidate the apartheid system, and imposed against the will of the people in 1984, forced the UDF to move beyond just protest. The masses were mobilised to resist being governed by a regime based on a constitution they had rejected. The black townships terminated their relationship with the local government administrations and all institutions of the state.

They stopped paying rentals and service charges to the local administrations. Those who had housing bonds with the Black Administration Boards stopped paying their monthly installments.

"As the notion of 'ungovernability' took root and the regime lost control of the townships, cadres of the movement worked hard at creating alternative centres of power which further undermined the authority of the regime," Chikane says.

Street and block committees and other people's structures like defence committees and 'people's courts' began to assume the roles of an alternative authority to the regime. To a large extent it was these actions which finally proved to the regime the futility of defending apartheid and forced it to the negotiating table.

Chikane explains that the leadership of the UDF always saw themselves as the interim leaders of the movement in the context of the banning of the peoples ' organisations and the imprisonment of their leaders.

"When we finally did get an opportunity to interact with the leadership of the movement outside the country, we discovered that the leadership also operated on the basis that it was an interim leadership waiting for the release of our imprisoned leaders," he says.

After the unbanning of the liberation movements and the release of its leaders from prison in 1990, there was no question about the need to re-align our mass organisations and its leadership, Chikane says.

In August 1991, a year and a half after the ANC's unbanning, and with virtually all of the UDF's leading cadre absorbed in various ways into the ANC and its allied structures, the UDF was formally disbanded.

"We reverted once again to consolidated leadership under the banner of one revolutionary movement banned in 1960," Chikane says.

Religion in schools

Preserving a rich and diverse religious heritage

South Africa has produced a new policy for learning about religion in schools. Political and religious leaders who are opposed to the ANC have been spreading false stories about this policy, and twisting the truth.

South Africa has a rich diverse religious heritage. It is rooted in the primary traditional spirituality from the beginnings of human community; it includes many historical religions imported from other parts of the world; and flourishes in the African indigenous spirituality which is spreading so rapidly today.

Our responsibility is to pass on this rich religious heritage which falls into two parts; religion education and religious education

Religious education means the instruction of an adherent in the tenets, tradition and practices of a particular religion, the nurturing of faith and the advocacy of membership. It seeks to inculcate a specific viewpoint on faith and of religious adherance. This is unquestionably the responsibility of the religious bodies themselves, of the home, and of the family.

In a democratic country like South Africa all religious groups are free to propagate their confession or sectoral form of faith (provided it is not racist) and no government education department can interfere or usurp that right and duty. Religious Education is a religious matter in which religions are free to preach advocate or indoctrinate people within the limits of the Constitution. The state is not a religious organisation, or theological body and cannot abuse its power by attempting to propagate any particular religion or religions. The state must maintain neutrality with respect to religion in all of its public institutions, including public schools. Religious institutions need not be neutral, and can teach children whatever they want.

Religion Education, on the other hand, is a different process. The educational mission of public schools in a democracy includes the responsibility to provide a free open space in which learners can explore religion, religions, and religious diversity in South Africa and the world. It concerns teaching not preaching; and its focus is not on being a person of faith but a person informed on the facts of all the faith groupings in South Africa. Government has clear educational goals and objectives to explain what religions there are, what they are about, and ways that increase understanding, respect, diversity and clarify the religious and non-religious sources of moral values. Religion - like politics, economics or literature - is an important human activity that learners should know about if they are to be well educated.

The country's coat of arms says 'diverse people, unite'. According to our Constitution everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion. Religious citizens are free to exercise their basic right to religious conviction expression and association. The state is a secular state which is neither religious nor anti-religious. Policy is based on neutrality towards specific religions.

Religion education must be justified by the educational character and value of the information conveyed to learners. Like any learning programme the study of religion, religions and religious diversity must be developmental. It needs to be facilitated by trained committed and enthusiastic professional educators, who can include qualified members of religious communities.

School assemblies have been a long-standing tradition in many of our schools but they are not compulsory. They may form an integral part of school activity. Assembly is not necessarily to be seen as an occasion for religious expression, but if such an expression does take place it should acknowledge and reflect the multi-religious nature of South African society in an appropriate manner.

The law enables schools to be used for the promotion of religious activities, but these must be conducted outside the normal school curriculum, and schools with public support must make the facilities available to people of different religious groups if so required.

Citizens with sufficient means can establish their own schools -, providing these comply with the law) - and may propagate their own sectarian form of religion should they so wish, but this must not exclude the promotion of religion education to all South African learners.

A great deal of the political propaganda being raised in some of the media, is based on false interpretations of the new religion education. Religion education is an exciting South African initiative in a field which has caused concern to people throughout the world. Religion education puts no barriers on the activity of religious institutions, homes, parents or families to propagate religious education in their own space. Religion education is the wider context of what is happening in our society to preserve our heritage and respect our diversity as we build new bridges into unity.

** Cedric Mayson is coordinator of the ANC Commission for Religious Affairs.

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