ANC Today

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Volume 4, No. 8, 27 February - 4 March 2004 

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THIS WEEK:

* Letter from the President: We must work to ensure free and fair elections 
* Public service transformation: Women manage to break through artificial ceiling 

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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

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.

Thabo Mbeki

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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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