In the year of the 10th anniversary of the adoption of our Constitution, Kader Asmal reflects on the priority that has been given to the rights of women and the challenges that remain in achieving the total emancipation of women.
International Women's Day is a day for applauding women's achievements and for focusing attention on the tasks which lie ahead. It is a day for reflecting on how far our society has come, and how far we st
ill have to go. We have not, in some cases, gone very far.
The South African Constitution, and its Bill of Rights, are widely acknowledged as among the most progressive and inclusive in the world today. How did South Africa evolve from a country notorious for its human rights abuses to one that is today a leading light for other countries grappling with issues of oppression in its many forms.
We should ask ourselves: how is it possible that out of the evil system of apartheid, we could adopt a Constitution in 1996 whose Founding Provisions describe our country as a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist state. No constitution anywhere else has identified such core values.
This recognition of the special nature of women's disabilities and the need for specific gender equality did not appear because of the liberal hearts of the drafters of the Constitution. It was the result of nearly four decades of struggle, agitation and activism led by women and supported by men. And it was the particular genius of the ANC, which established the foundation on which we built the palace of 1996.
We merged the theory with the practice, recalling Lenin's injunction that theory without practice is sterile, while practice without theory is blind.
Our eyes were open and were able to persuade our opponents on the correctness of our positions.
The human rights tradition of the ANC has been a history of expanding the scope of inclusion within which human dignity is affirmed. Although the Bill of Rights in the "Africans' Claims in South Africa" in 1943 clearly applied to both men and women, its primary focus was on eliminating racial discrimination. However, there were two proposals - apart from being way ahead of the times - which reflected the gender free approach of the drafters. The first was the demand of universal suffrage for all adults and the second concerned the revolutionary concept of equal pay for equal work.
During the early 1950s, the ANC developed new initiatives to assert women's rights as human rights. The Women's Charter of 1954 was a landmark in this process of asserting the rights of women and demanding freedom from discrimination on the basis of gender. But long before that, Charlotte Maxeke in an extraordinary speech at a conference in Fort Hare in 1930 described movingly and vividly what became known subsequently as the triple oppression of black women. It is the most remarkable analysis of the migrant labour system and its effects, especially on the young and women. She ended with an insight that was truly precocious: "If you definitely and earnestly set out to lift women and children up in the social life of [Africans], you will find that the men will benefit and, thus, the whole community, both Black and White."
The emancipation of black women, therefore, will liberate men, she implied, from the shackles that imprison them.
In the founding constitution of the ANC of 1912, women could not be full members with voting rights, but could be auxiliary members. In 1943, the year of the publication of the Africans' Claims, the ANC finally extended to women full membership in the movement, the first liberation movement to do so.
From the beginning, women participated in the Bantu Women's League, formed in 1919 under the leadership of Charlotte Maxeke, and the ANC Women's League, launched in 1948, which mobilised women in campaigns against pass laws, poor working conditions, high food prices, and the enactments of apartheid. During 1954, the ANC Women's League played a leading role in the formation of the Federation of South African Women, a non-racial organisation that drafted the Women's Charter at its inaugural conference.
This powerful formulation of women's rights, which still stands as a reference point in contemporary efforts for the liberation and empowerment of women, made a major contribution to expanding the scope of the ANC human rights tradition by insisting that the quest for human dignity must be not only non-racial but also non-sexist.
The Federation of South African Women realised Charlotte Maxeke's vision of a non-racial organisation of women. The Federation also embodied her militancy, emerging in the context of the large-scale mobilisation of women during the 1950s in towns and rural areas in protest against pass laws and other forms of apartheid oppression. Accordingly, the demands of the Charter were based in a rich history of struggle against all forms of oppression and gender discrimination. The Women's Charter called for the right to vote, the right to full employment opportunities, equal rights with men in relation to property, marriage and children and for the removal of all laws and restrictive customs that deny women such equal rights. The Women's Charter called for compulsory and free education for all children and removal of laws that restrict movement and all oppressive laws.
In all of these legitimate demands for women's rights, the Women's Charter of 1954 profoundly shaped the character of the human rights tradition of the ANC and the nature of the democratic dispensation in a liberated South Africa.
We celebrate this year the 50th anniversary on our Women's Day, 9 August, the famous march on the Union Buildings by over 20,000 women. It is best known for the slogan, "Strijdom, you have struck a rock". Although the march was organised to oppose the extension of the pass laws to women and for the repeal of all pass laws, the petition ended in the language of rights: "We shall not rest until we have won for our children the fundamental rights of freedom, justice and security".
The Freedom Charter of 1955, as we all know, produced a major programme for political social and economic emancipation. It became a beacon for women and men united in a common struggle for dignity, equality and social justice. All rights, the Charter laid down, are indivisible.
But the ANC had not forgotten that a general approach of rights for all ignored the specific disabilities that women only suffer from. Building on the Women's Charter of 1954, the negotiating stance of the ANC reflected the need for specific references to women's rights. In 1988, as a response to the need to clarify the ANC's negotiations stance, we produced the 'Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa'. The clarion call, with its first reference to affirmative action, was as follows: "Women shall have equal rights in all spheres of public and private life and the state shall take affirmative action to eliminate inequalities and discrimination between the sexes."
Women were no longer invisible. No political party could claim such a striking commitment which was strengthened and expanded, on the eve of real negotiations, when the ANC adopted in April 1991 the 'Constitutional Principles for a Democratic South Africa'. We bore in mind Oliver Tambo's declaration that we shall not be free if one half of our people continue to be oppressed.
It is worth quoting in full the provision headed in the Principles as Non-Sexist, the first time such a phrase was used in the constitutional negotiations:
"The new Constitution must reflect a commitment to full, free and equal participation in the new South Africa. Law and practice keep South African women out of their rightful place in helping to build democracy and enable a new nation to evolve and deprive them of their human rights as individuals.
The new Constitution must therefore:
This has been a golden thread, a continuum, in the road map for the route to the liberation of women we followed. A better life for women demands our commitment to the programme for full emancipation.
For those who are contented, whether outside court houses, in boardrooms, as fathers or as husbands, as traditional leaders, as employers or in Parliament, I draw attention to the stirring call of Ben Okri, the Nigerian writer:
They are only the exhausted who think
That they have arrived
At the final destination
The end of the road
With all their dreams achieved
And no new dreams to hold.
We have not arrived at the final destination. We have moved from struggle to freedom. But we still have a long way to go towards the total emancipation of women internationally and at home.
Kader Asmal is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee. This is an edited version of a speech in Parliament on the celebration of International Women's Day, 8 March 2006.
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