South Africa’s first national Women’s Day brought gender issues to everyone’s lips in a way that this country has never seen before. It provided a great talking point — but also an opportunity for hollow rhetoric and bland generalities.
Parliament took the lead on Tuesday by calling a special sitting to mark the day. The Speaker of the National Assembly, Frene Ginwala, called on Parliament to commit itself to a non-sexist society, including men in the challenge. To give them their due, many rose to the occasion.
Ginwala’s speech, which touched on the history of the women’s struggle in this country, gave Women’s Day a focus and a meaning. Unfortunately both focus and meaning slipped, and were often lost in subsequent speeches, not only in the National Assembly but all over the country.
Politicians, feminists, development workers, newsreaders and journalists threw themselves into frenzied celebrations of women’s achievements, while at the same time wallowing in a sense of women’s oppression. The incoherent jargon-laden jumble of words, messages and metaphor which flowed from podiums and the media could only serve to confuse (or bore) those who least understand why women should be empowered at all. An M-Net presenter ended a film about Ginwala with the words: “And that’s all for Mothers’
Everyone jumped on the bandwagon: the National Party used the opportunity to support women’s rights by opposing abortion on demand and shopping centres celebrated with special offers. An advert for one mall told women to exercise their rights and “go shopping … and if your partner complains, just tell him who’s boss”.
The day that marked the historic women’s march on Pretoria has become a political version of Christmas — a festival which everyone can claim to be their own and stamp with their own meaning, even if it is totally at odds with the intention of those who declared this a
The result: the liberation of women has joined the ranks of those New South African cliches which have become devoid of meaning because they are thrown about by everyone, from far-leftwing to far-rightwing to shopping centre marketeers — words like non-racialism, transparency, nation-building, reconstruction and development .. and now, women’s rights.
Did male supremacists feel challenged? We suspect not, because many joined in the fulsome — and often patronising — praise for women which marked the day. Ironically, South Africa is one of the very few countries which will be able to report substantial progress on gender issues to the Beijing conference later this month. Can our first Women’s Day be counted among those achievements?