Madikizela-Mandela has not delivered as leader of the ANC Women’s League in the past, and herrhetoric may presage the death of the organisation, writes Rhoda Kadalie
THE re-election of Winnie Madikizela- Mandela as president of the African National Congress Women’s League is more a reflection of the weakness of the organisation than it is a victory for the women’s movement.
The persona of Madikizela-Mandela loomed large in the conference arena two weeks ago, rather than a strategic plan of action for women’s empowerment, as exemplified by her election speech.
She used her self-inflicted poverty to identify with the people of South Africa. She threatened to shut up the press should they continue to vilify her, she declared that the salvation of the people lies in her hands, as only she can lead them to the promised land.
Madikizela-Mandela has not been able to deliver as leader of the league over the past five years, so what makes her think that she can do so now?
Is such rhetoric not the death knell of an organisation made ineffectual and weak by constant allegations of financial mismanagement, a cut-throat leadership battle and no clear programme of action?
Can it be disputed that the election was a personal victory for Madikizela-Mandela, whose main base has been the league, in a context of increasing isolation of her own political party?
But it can also be argued that the state of disorganisation in the league has inadvertently created the space for an array of women’s organisations to emerge and for a range of women’s voices to be heard as exemplified by the series of submissions made at recent parliamentary hearings on the Lund committee’s recommendations on child maintenance grants.
Critical alliances are being forged around a number of key post-apartheid issues like abortion, state maintenance grants, domestic and sexual violence, women’s human rights among others, while the league languishes in the narcissistic political machinations of its leaders.
Party in-fighting has paralysed the organisation to such an extent that Lilian Ngoyi, Josie Palmer, Katie Louw, Dora Tamana, Helen Joseph and Frances Baard would fail to recognise the organisation, were they alive today.
The irony is that it is women in the ANC leadership who are in conflict with each other, so that there is nothing to instil any confidence that loyalties to women’s interests will take primacy over party- political loyalties.
In the context of human and constitutional rights, the league has not been very vocal around the Beijing Platform of Action, the monitoring of the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw), nor the under-funding of the Commission for Gender Equality.
With the parliamentary hearings on the Termination of Pregnancy Bill and the state maintenance grants for women and children, the organisations which were most vociferous were the Reproductive Rights Alliance, the Abortion Reform Action Group, Rape Crisis, Ilitha LaBantu, the Gender Advocacy Project, the Women’s Human Rights Documentation Centre, the New Women’s Movements, the Human Rights Commission and the Commission for Gender Equality, to name but a few. And not the women’s league.
Clearly the league is no longer the dominant conduit for women’s voices. Its inertia has alerted women to seek bases elsewhere and not to be dependent on an organisation which has lost its vision.
There is no better time than now for the league to get its act together, or to disband, given the proliferation of national institutions committed to the empowerment of women.
There is the Office of the Status of Women, which has been charged with monitoring the gender desks in each government department; the ad-hoc Committee on Improving the Quality of Life and Status of Women was formed to monitor government’s commitment to Cedaw; the parliamentary Women’s Group is a multi-party women’s caucus which frequently convenes around urgent issues of concern to women and the recently constituted Commission on Gender Equity which has been appointed to monitor, investigate, advise and lobby around issues related to the advancement of gender equity.
Rallying around women’s issues is not necessarily a unifying activity as exemplified by the schism within the women’s leadership in the ANC. Who determines the needs of women? Of which women? As defined by whom? And how should they be prioritised? The notion of “woman”, particularly in the South African context, cannot be taken for granted. Who speaks on behalf of whom?
These issues currently determine the political landscape of women’s politics in South Africa, and while the women’s league continues to play political games, the need for urgency has propelled certain organisations into action in order to address the crucial concerns of poor women in South Africa.
The league should guard against becoming as moribund and ineffectual as most post- independence women’s party-political organisations have become elsewhere in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Its future is dependent on a radical restructuring in terms of its leadership, aims and objectives and programme of action. It needs to woo younger membership and to diversify its base in terms of region, ethnicity and class by recapturing its old strongholds in its former constituencies in Guguletu, Woodstock, Wynberg and Bonteheuwel.
If this is not done as a matter of urgency, the women’s league is doomed to perpetuate itself as a remnant of its former self, existing only in name, with no power, basking in the reflected glory of its illustrious past.
Kadalie is a commissioner of the Human Rights Commission