neglect of women
Joanne Fedler
Since South Africa put August 9 on its books as a day in which the whole population can take a day off, go on a picnic, a frolic in the park or host a braaivleis, there have been many achievements.
The South African government has been very busy since 1994. The president’s writing hand must be cramped by now – he has signed and ratified so many documents that enshrine women’s equality and rights.
South Africa’s equality clause in the Constitution is one of the most progressive worldwide. The South African Law commission has recently published a draft Bill on domestic violence which, if passed, would be one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation on the books.
We have a Termination of Pregnancy Act which allows a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Marie Stopes Clinics advertise terminations with free abandon on bus shelters and public garbage cans.
The Department of Justice has published a gender policy which promises and promises and promises some form of justice to women.
“National machinery” with the word gender thrown in at every possible opportunity has been set up to deal with “the girls” (as if gender is synonymous with women and men do not have a gender).
We are, for all intents and purposes, a deeply gender-sensitive country with progressive gender politics. We are really a Snac – a Sensitive New Age Country. It would appear as if there is much to celebrate.
But many women on National Women’s Day will not celebrate beyond having the obligatory boerewors roll. We are tired of hailing documents and constitutions and international commitments as the benchmark of what we have achieved.
South African women are in a state of mourning because no matter what commitments the government undertakes (and it has undertaken many), women and children continue to be raped, assaulted and murdered. It is almost as if the rate of violence against women and children has been inversely proportional to the democratisation of our society and the commitment to gender-sensitive policies.
Our legal system is rotten to the core, staffed with inefficient and overworked civil servants, who blame the system when whoops!, another real criminal slips through the loopholes and another little corpse finds its lonely way to the mortuary.
Magistrates and judges continue to hand down judgments in femicide, rape and battery cases which are comical in their misogyny. Seemingly these days, the legal system is softer on paedophile murderers than on tax-evaders. Or traffic fine defaulters. No wonder we easily slide back into our old evil ways and fondly remember the days of the death penalty when rights were not only the valued birthright of rapists and child molesters.
In this context, what can National Women’s Day mean for our society? I would like this day to be something more than a platform for politicians to recommit to everything they have already committed themselves to.
If we have a moment to revive the integrity of the history of the day in which women took to the streets to protest against the pass laws, we may recover something of what we have lost.
On this day, women marched to the Union Buildings, showing their force and strength in numbers. Women claimed their right to be free from the oppression of the pass laws which would restrict their movements and break up their families. They did not wait for liberation to rain down on them like manna. They demanded.
In a matter of months, political parties will be canvassing votes and shmoozing with us mortals to ensure our little X marks their spot for the 1999 elections. It’s time that women showed our strength in numbers and refused to vote for parties that do not commit themselves to ending violence against women and children – with concrete plans of action and budgets to match.
We want education in schools to ensure our youths grow up with a deep sense of the right to bodily integrity. We want judgments that put an unequivocal end to the free reign of the batterers, rapists and murderers.
We want to celebrate National Women’s Day our way – free from all forms of violence.
It is time that the government recognised that unless it acts to end violence against women, the only “national machinery” that will work is state-funded AK-47s for women, so that we can protect what the government has promised it will protect.
Joanne Fedler is director of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre