We must work to ensure free and fair elections

Recent events in KwaZulu-Natal, including the murder of political activists, have drawn attention to the need for us to continue to focus on the absolute imperative to ensure that we have peaceful elections. As before, everything must be done so that we have free and fair elections. This means that the people must have the right and possibility freely to decide which political formation they choose to support and vote for.

The Electoral Act specifically prohibits resort to violence and intimidation to influence the outcome of the elections.

It therefore makes it illegal for anybody to compel or unlawfully persuade any person to attend and participate in or not attend and participate in a political meeting, march, demonstration or any other political event.

It prohibits everybody from denying representatives of registered party or candidates reasonable access to voters, both in public and private places.

It makes it illegal for anybody unlawfully to prevent the holding of a political meeting, march, demonstration or any other political event.

Once the election is called, as happened on February 11, until the outcome is declared, it is illegal to deface billboards, placards and posters.

The law also provides for the punishment of anybody found guilty of violating any of these provisions. Prison terms of up to 10 years may be imposed against those found guilty. This demonstrates the seriousness that attaches to these offences.

Of course, there are other laws on our statute books that prohibit other unlawful acts that may have an impact on our elections. These also provide for the necessary punishment of offenders.

The gravity of the specific offences to which we have referred derives from the central importance of the electoral process to the success of our democratic system. We could never say we have a true democracy if our people do not have the possibility freely to choose the people who represent them in our national, provincial and local legislatures.

From its foundation, our movement has fought for and upheld the right of all South Africa to vote, and be voted into positions of authority. This found expression in the famous statement in the Freedom Charter, that "The People shall Govern".

When we fought for our liberation, with many people losing their lives and making other sacrifices, one of our strategic objectives was to achieve the goal of One Person, One Vote. The masses of our people understood this matter clearly, that the very perpetuation of the system of white minority rule demanded that the majority must be denied the right to vote.

The victory of the national liberation movement was therefore a victory of the people for the exercise of the right to universal adult suffrage. It meant that the risen masses had won for themselves the right to govern. It meant that they had taken a decisive step forward to empower themselves to determine their destiny.

In this context, we must emphasise the point that all our structures of governance must enjoy unqualified legitimacy in the eyes of the masses of our people. They can only derive this legitimacy from their election by the people in a free and fair process.

Apart from and in addition to any other consideration, this legitimacy is critically important given both our past and our future.

Only ten years separate us from our apartheid political past. Memories of that terrible period are still very fresh in the minds of the majority of our people. We cannot allow that the situation arises so soon after our emancipation, that questions are raised about the stability and permanence of our democratic system.

Ahead of us is a period of great changes with regard to the socio-economic situation in our country. During the last ten years we have put in place many policies and programmes to address the challenge of the fundamental transformation of our country away from its colonial and apartheid past.

We have the policies that will help us to build a non-racial and non-sexist society, end poverty and unemployment, improve the performance of our economy and ensure its growth and development in the context of globalisation, strengthen the effectiveness of our developmental state, improve the quality of life of all our people, and so on.

The central challenge ahead of us is therefore to ensure that our policies result in changing our society, so that it guarantees and provides a better life for all. This entails a challenging and sustained offensive to change many things in our country. Among other things, we have even to overcome the temptation of continuing to do things in particular ways, simply because this is the way we have always done them.

We will have to break new ground and overcome the resistance of the institutions and persons who have a vested interest in conserving the old, simply because it benefits them. We will have to learn new things and new ways of doing things.

To succeed in everything we have to do, requires that we have a system of governance that enjoys the popular support and confidence of the masses of our people. This system must have the legitimacy born of the fact of being freely and democratically mandated by the people. Free and fair elections are therefore fundamental to our capacity to implement the people-centred transformation agenda that must and will characterise our Second Decade of Liberation.

The numbers of those registered to vote in the 2004 elections confirm the commitment of our people to ensure the consolidation of our democratic system. We have 2.5 million more registered voters than in 1999. The average increase in voter registration by province is 14.07 %. Four million people will be voting for the first time. The youth, those between the ages of 18 and 35, constitute 44.4% of the registered voters.

These figures demonstrate that those who claimed that the people are disillusioned with democracy and the ANC-led process of change, and that the youth had lost hope in the future, were completely wrong. In reality these false claims were made by the political opponents of our movement, who will stop at nothing in their attempt to discredit us and win support for themselves on the basis of gross misrepresentation as well as denial and distortion of the truth.

Our movement must be proud of the fact that it stands head and shoulders above all the other political formations in terms of the extensive work it did among the people to support the IEC in its work to register as many voters as possible.

It is the duty of all members and supporters of our movement as well as all democrats to ensure that nobody in our country compromises or undermines the right and possibility of any of our citizens who have taken the trouble to register, freely to exercise their right to vote.

Certainly, we cannot allow that the freedom space created by the democratic system is abused to undermine the very system that creates this space. Our liberation does not give anybody the liberty unlawfully to take away the freedoms of another person.

Nobody should therefore make the mistake of thinking that democracy gives him or her the right to threaten or use force, in reality to take away the very rights that define our democratic system. All of us must know that to defend itself, our democratic system has passed the necessary legislation to make it illegal for anybody unlawfully to take away or diminish the very rights that are inherent to the practice of democracy.

Similarly, all of us must bear this in mind that the violation of any of these laws carries the consequence that those responsible for such violations will be arrested and if found guilty, duly punished according to the law. Nobody should do wrong things, entertaining the delusion that they can escape the full might of our system of justice. All of us must learn to understand that the days of impunity are a thing of the past. Wrong doers will be arrested and prosecuted.

This means that the law enforcement agencies, supported by the National Defence Force, will be fully mobilised throughout the election period. They will carry out their tasks with a very clear understanding of their obligations in terms of the law. And they will carry out these tasks without fear or favour, treating everybody equally, without regard to the political affiliation of any offender.

The law provides that an aggrieved political party or person can lodge a complaint in the event that their rights are violated in the manner we have already explained. What this means is that all our structures, as well as those of other political parties, should organise themselves and exercise the necessary vigilance to be able to intervene to assist the Police Service to apprehend wrongdoers as well as prevent the commission of crime.

We must therefore understand that our police officers, our soldiers and our intelligence operatives are there to defend democracy. They occupy the forward trenches in the struggle to ensure the consolidation and further deepening of our democracy. Accordingly, they require the cooperation of all our citizens, and especially those among us who are directly involved in the task of organising and mobilising the people to vote for our next national and provincial legislatures.

All our structures, members and organisers must therefore organise themselves to maintain continuous contact with the law enforcement agencies deployed in their areas. This will increase the possibility of these agencies to stop impending unlawful activities and to act against those who nevertheless engage in such activities.

But our political structures also have another important task to carry out. We must inform all our members about the matters raised in this Letter. It is critically important that all our members are familiar with all the do's and don'ts relating to the task to ensure that we hold free and fair elections.

A number of times already, we have been exposed to openly provocative actions carried out by some of our political opponents. Naturally, all of us get angry and want to hit back at those responsible for these actions. However, we should never forget that we have a continuing responsibility to ensure that we hold free and fair elections.

This means that we must refuse to be provoked into doing wrong things, responding to those who try deliberately to provoke us. However understandable in particular circumstances, violent responses from us would be as wrong as the provocative violent actions to which we would be responding. At all times, we must hold our heads high as the political formation that led our people to freedom, and neither undermine our own historic victory nor tarnish our image and reputation by engaging in any acts or threats of violence and intimidation.

Not a single member of our organisation must be held responsible for actions that compromise our possibility to hold free and fair elections. We must fully and faithfully respect and implement the Code of Conduct prepared by the IEC, to which we are signatory. At the same time, all our members should remember that any involvement in breaking the law or acting in a manner that puts our movement into disrepute, would lead to our own disciplinary action. This might lead to dishonourable exclusion and expulsion from our ranks.

We also have an obligation to work with all other parties and organisations jointly to oppose violence and intimidation and ensure that the April 14 elections are free and fair. We must make it our responsibility to seek out everybody who can make a contribution to this outcome, both the political formations and civil society organisations, to encourage them to carry out the work of mobilising for free and fair elections.

In the years before and after the 1994 elections, many of our people died tragically as a result of political violence. This was because of a murderous campaign that was launched specifically to undermine the advance to the democratic order and to destabilise the new democracy when it was introduced.

By the time of the 1999 elections, we had succeeded radically to reduce and virtually eliminate this violence. This did not mean that intimidation and the enforcement of no go areas had completely been eliminated in all parts of our country. Those who continued to engage in these illegal and anti-democratic activities did so because they knew that otherwise they would not get the support of the people.

Unfortunately, we still have people and parties of this kind in our country. Some of these are more desperate now than they were in 1999, because they know that they do not enjoy the support of the people. They are therefore ready and willing to engage in all manner of illegal and immoral activities to retain whatever little support they can muster.

To these, democracy, the free expression of the will of the people, has become a dangerous threat to their survival. They are therefore determined to use everything they can to limit the ability of these masses freely to decide who shall constitute our next national and provincial legislatures and governments.

As the premier democratic formation of our country, the main architect of our democratic order and our constitution, we have a responsibility to ensure that we defeat the intentions and machinations of these desperate people. We have a duty to help ensure that the 14 April 2004 elections stand out as the best example of what we mean when we speak of free and fair elections. We must organise ourselves, and act in such a manner, that we achieve this historic result. We dare not, and will not fail.

Public service transformation

Women manage to break through artificial ceiling

Addressing gender representivity in the Public Service is not a challenge unique to South Africa. In South Africa, however, the process is complicated by the special conditions created through the apartheid past, requiring a strategy that addresses the issue on multiple fronts.

The most recent figures available regarding gender transformation in the public service reveals that government has managed to break through an artificial ceiling that very few countries and organisations both in the private and public sector achieve.

The most often used indicator to comment on progress regarding gender transformation is the quota that was set in the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service. The target determines that 30 percent of all new recruits at managerial level should be women. This target was recently retained by Cabinet for a second term, after a temporary ceiling was reached for women managers at around 20 percent for three consecutive years. This ceiling was not unexpected since international comparisons have shown this 20 percent ceiling for women managers to be a fairly standard phenomenon, and that it is only with extra-ordinary effort and dedication that this artificial upper limit is pierced.

The figures available through the Vulindlela system shows that women were the successful candidates in 26 percent of all appointments on managerial level across the Public Service during the period March 2002 to February 2003. This achievement is further commendable bearing in mind that female resignations on management levels averaged at 22 percent. This means that women are entering management ranks faster than what the attrition rate is, resulting in a net gain of women managers.

The results of this net gain is seen in the fact that women now constitute 24 percent of all managerial positions in the public service, compared with the 21 percent in the previous year. The approximately 350 women senior managers, spread across all managerial ranks - including those of Director General and Head of Department - is a far cry from the handful of women managers that we found in 1994. At that time women in the public service reached the glass ceiling when they have arrived at the lowest managerial rank, that of director.

The number is, however, only an indicator of much more profound and qualitative changes that have been taking place. Today the service conditions of women are virtually identical to those of men. Compare this to the situation not so long ago when women were not allowed to be employed on a permanent basis, forfeiting job security, pension fund membership, etc. Then after some reforms were introduced in 1976, women could be employed on a permanent basis, but female officers who got married lost their permanent appointments, once again affecting their overall financial status and career prospects. The services of married female officers could also be terminated in order to employ unmarried staff. Certain positions were reserved for men, regardless of the competence levels of women, and women were only entitled to receive half of the service bonus that men received.

When the ANC came to power the prevailing situation was still one of women excluded from the home owner allowance scheme unless their husbands were permanently medically unfit for remunerative employment. Women also contributed differently to the Government Service Pension Fund, increasing their material vulnerability in old age. The basis for taxation of women was also different.

This has now all changed (with the exception of retirement age) to ensure parity. In addition, we have introduced certain progressive measures in the new leave dispensation that move away from casting women exclusively in the care-giving role, while also recognising the reality in practice that the burden of childbearing places on the female employee. Provision has been made, for example, for paternal leave.

The progress that we have made is certainly cause for celebration, but it should not blind us to the remaining challenges to continue to advance to the ultimate goal of achieving full representivity of women at all levels of society and certainly also in the most senior ranks of the public service. This would require a full 52 percent of women in senior management position, meaning that we are not yet halfway there.

The road ahead could be formidable in terms of deeply entrenched male dominated value systems and world views that are hardly addressed at the moment. Where the pressure is currently on us to consider career-pathing for public servants, it should, for example, be remembered that existing perceptions of career paths are fundamentally based on the perceptions of how the traditional male career model looks. Management theory is also dominated by patterns that match male management style, with arguments about changes in style of aggression, competitiveness, and so forth struggling to achieve centre stage - if not in rhetoric, then certainly in practice. All of this has spill-over effects in gender biasing of tools and techniques such as competency models which leave the fundamental male entrenched assumptions largely unchallenged.

We also need to remain vigilant regarding practices that we follow at the moment that later on can jeopardise women's ascent to power, or which can disadvantage them relevant to male candidates. One of these trends that we have to monitor is found in how we divide the current training budget of government. On the surface it would seem to be fairly equitable. The most recent PSETA report reveals that training opportunities split almost exactly in the middle for men and women. However, when one interrogates the data that inform the report it shows for example that at the senior management level, only 22 percent of the opportunities to receive managerial and supervisory training went to women. Considering all training opportunities at that level, women's 32 percent pails into insignificance compared to that of the male counterparts particularly since capacity and the availability of the pool from which to draw senior women managers are often cited by men as being the obstacle to transformation and capacity development of women managers. This has been identified by officials in my department as one of the key thrusts to ensure continued progress in terms of the transformation agenda. The perceived limitations in terms of capacity in itself is a notion that should be challenged - the most recent Labour Survey by Statistics SA reports that in the category from which it is most likely that managerial staff are recruited, those with post matric qualifications, women in all categories have more and higher qualifications.

Representivity and equality are fundamental values of the African National Congress. Ensuring that there is gender equity throughout the Public Service is fundamental to the transformation of our state institutions and our nation as a whole. Through collaboration with key stakeholders such as the Office on the Status of Women, as well as civil society organisations, we move towards building a truly representative Pubic Service.

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