By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — Throughout the negotiations process since 1990, the African National Congress has pushed hard for the post-apartheid constitution to proclaim South Africa a non-sexist state. That this was incorporated into the constitutional principles that will guide the drafting of a final constitution after the April elections is a remarkable achievement. But the ANC and women within it want more than words. That was the message from a three-day ANC conference held here recently.
The February 18-20 conference was attended by delegates from ANC branches and regions all over the country. While the conference was convened by the ANC Commission on the Emancipation of Women, it was a conference of the ANC as a whole. The delegates set themselves the task of responding to the demands articulated by South African women through the Women's National Coalition (WNC), a broad alliance of women's organisations.
The delegates also closely examined the draft ANC Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) and the interim constitution to ensure that the concerns of women are fully integrated into the new South Africa.
Green Left Weekly spoke to Barbara Masekela, director of the ANC's Office of the President, Frene Ginwala, head of the ANC research department and deputy head of the ANC's Commission on the Emancipation of Women, and Nomboniso Gasa, head of the ANC Commission on the Emancipation of Women, about the conference and the main issues facing South African women.
"The conference is to ensure that the ANC upholds its commitment to emancipate women and empower them to be equal partners in the new democratic society", Masekela explained. "Recently our reconstruction and development conference made certain resolutions in regard to the economic and social situation and the empowering of those who are oppressed, including women.
"We have to make sure that this not just a wish list of things on paper. In fact, when the structures are set up in the new government to plan and then implement these programs, women will have to be fully integrated into those structures so that they can participate in the formulation of the plans and the implementation itself ... the major reason we are having this conference is to make sure that this is so."
Masekela expressed confidence that the ANC would meet the challenge. The decision of the ANC to reserve places for women on its candidate list made her optimistic. "Although we didn't get the ANC to endorse that 50% of the candidates in the new government should be women, as we are 50% of the population, at least we have been able this time around to ensure that at least a third of the nominees are women."
Frene Ginwala pointed out that the conference was the first time the ANC, as a whole, has had a conference that looks specifically at the question of the emancipation of women. "This in an attempt to mainstream women rather than marginalise and ghettoise women, which is the normal practice in South Africa, as much as anywhere else."
The conference follows the release of the results of a massive research project by the WNC in which women articulated their concerns for the future South Africa, Ginwala said. This made it necessary for the ANC's proposed Reconstruction and Development Program to be re-examined to see how far the concerns of women have been taken on board.
It was also necessary to look at the interim constitution and its shortfalls, Ginwala added. Negotiations have wrestled with "the whole concept of trying to create a new society that is non-sexist ... The ANC has taken positions right across the board to make institutions and structures that incorporate both women and the concept of genuine equality ... We want to assess this interim constitution, to what extent is it satisfactory and if it's not, what changes are we going to need [while] drafting a new constitution ... And given a government of national unity, what are the political dynamics which we going to face if we are going to put forward this kind of program?"
Women's issues in South Africa cover a broad spectrum of issues, Masekela told Green Left Weekly. "We know that about 60% of people in the country cannot read or write, and of those women are the majority. If you look at women in the rural areas particularly, there are a variety of practical problems — electrification, water, education. Those issues are all addressed by our RDP.
"In the first place we want to ensure that women are equal before the law, that they have all the opportunities that other citizens have. All those priorities — water, electricity, housing, wages — for women are really at the bottom rung of the ladder. While we acknowledge the general oppression of black people, we want to ensure that affirmative action also includes affirmative action for women ... because one thing that we all agree on is that South Africa is a patriarchal society and that discrimination impinges on women of all races.
"In establishing a non-sexist state, we must pay particular attention to issues that relate to all women, for instance technical education. Technical education in this country has been the preserve for the most part of males. So in the new dispensation educational programs will have to take into account the disabilities that have been foisted on women."
The most important finding of the NWC's research, Ginwala said, was that women felt they had no power to make decisions about every aspect of their lives. "One of the focus groups said, 'Yes, we want water, but even if we get water, we want a say in where the wells will be and where the pipes will go'. That summed up the problem: women are saying we want respect, we want the right to make decisions and participate in decision making, whether it be their family relations, their economic status, their children or politics. They were not just talking about participation in parliament, but in decisions that concern women at every level.
"Even if the ANC says the RDP will give you water, what does that mean? It raises for organisations like the ANC the question of what we mean by democracy. What structures, what sort of institutions do we need that are going to be able to incorporate and facilitate women's participation in decision-making? So long as we have our present structures and institutions within society, women are going to be marginalised", Ginwala stressed.
Rural women are becoming more organised and vocal in church prayer groups, mothers' unions and burial societies. The WNC helps to bring these groups together to focus on broader issues.
Nomboniso Gasa explained that there have been interesting developments in rural communities with the emergence of a rural women's movement, which is challenging customary laws and practices that discriminate against women. In the Transvaal, the eastern Cape and the Transkei, "Women are beginning to sit in local committees that usually are chaired and headed by chiefs ... After the unbanning of the ANC, women began to look at how they could try to democratise those institutions; women began to say that we can also sit in the committee that is around the head man.
"It is important for us to go out there and look at what forms of organisation women have come up with on their own initiatives and to begin to build on that. They are very articulate in terms of what they want and what they don't want. But they might not necessarily explain in our terms."
Gasa said that there was a "shift in rural communities in that the majority of households, about 60%, are female headed. Women are beginning to feel that they head those families but they don't necessarily have power." Ginwala pointed out that that was also true in urban communities.
Masekela believes that democratisation and participation will throw up new forms in which women can organise themselves. "They have been excluded formally, and they have been isolated as individuals in their own homes ... For instance, if a preschool is set up in a rural community where all the women take their children, it means they can organise to be involved in the way that their children are educated. The whole process of democratisation is going to provide a space for women to become more inventive and find other ways of organising themselves."
In South Africa, as in every other part of the world, women are concerned about control over their bodies. Gasa told Green Left Weekly that the NWC found that women "want to have control over their lives, they want to be part of decision making, but they also went further and said they want to have control over their own bodies. In South Africa, especially for African women, it's not just about abortion, it's about the whole question of procreation, about deciding how many children you want, about reproductive rights. It is in that context that women raised the question of control over their own bodies and their lives ...
"The ANC in its RDP, in the health section, has begun to look at abortion and says specifically that women should have the right to decide whether they want to have a termination of pregnancy according to their own beliefs", Gasa pointed out.
"We also have to begin to look at the question of domestic violence and make it a national issue. There are very interesting similarities between our approach and what has come out from the NWC. They have also begun to say the question of domestic violence and abuse of women in general must be made a national issue."
The conference was opened by ANC secretary-general Cyril Ramaphosa. He admitted the ANC had not done enough for women and pledged that women would feature prominently in the post-election cabinet. "Women across the racial and class spectrum continue to stand oppressed as human beings. This happens in the largely white, Calvinistic doctrine; it also happens in traditional African homes as well as Asian homes ... It is a situation which all of us must make concerted efforts in resolving."
Proposals from the conference will be put to the national executive of the ANC. They included:
- the RDP should provide for housing subsidies that favour women;
- the RDP should work towards "developing a society in which violence against women is unacceptable";
- ANC MPs should consult and be made accountable to women's organisations through the ANC and mass organisations;
- every ministerial budget should expressly state its impact on women, and ministerial reports indicate the effect on women of every government program;
- women must be fairly represented in public office;
- courts should be made more accessible to women by reducing legal costs and giving support in civil cases and maintenance claims;
- land should not be restored only where people had been dispossessed by apartheid laws, but should include women who were denied land ownership because of customary laws;
- inequalities in customary law and religious beliefs should be broadly challenged before a gender commission.