Priscilla Themba
right to reply
Marianne Merten’s article “Waiting for the pennies to drop” (March 30 to April 5) is premised on untruths and discredits that brand of journalism that seeks to uncover the truth.
The joint monitoring committee on the improvement of the quality of life and status of women did hold a women’s jazz concert on International Women’s Day. If Merten had bothered to ask our chair, African National Congress MP Pregs Govender, she would have discovered two things:
l The concert was held to raise funds for children left destitute by HIV/Aids. It raised R20?000, which is being channelled through the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
l The committee did not spend a cent from its own budget in holding the concert. The event was sponsored by a company and showcased the talents of South Africa’s women jazz musicians. Corporate tables were sold to women and the committee in its address to the event encouraged individuals and companies present to use the new laws and their resources to take forward the empowerment of all women, particularly the poor.
It is thus extremely unfortunate that Merten nonetheless went ahead with a non-story. The story serves to deny the role that the joint monitoring committee on the improvement of the quality of life and status of women has played, and continues to play, in Parliament in ensuring that a whole barrage of legal changes such as the Domestic Violence Act and changes to the labour laws specifically targeting women workers, such as the sexual harassment code, parental rights and so on, were enacted by our democratic Parliament.
The committee with its NGO partners in the Women’s Budget Initiative has been in the forefront of pushing the government at national, provincial and local level, to match its policy commitments to reprioritisation of the budget.
The committee and its chair have throughout prioritised requests for meetings from rural women and poor women. The committee includes members from rural areas, such as Mam Lydia Kompe-Ngwenya, a founder of the Rural Women’s Movement, who have a strong track record of working for the improvement of the lives of rural women.
When Parliament goes into recess and constituency work at Easter, the committee will be holding workshops in rural areas with women in the poorest provinces. The issues covered will include their experience of the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act and of customary law and inheritance.
Apart from sharing information on the rights they now have in terms of the new laws, we aim to also use the information they will share with us to inform the committee’s position that the customary law on inheritance and the sexual offences laws must be prioritised and enacted to improve the lives of women, particularly rural women.
The committee, as a parliamentary committee, and the legislature as a whole, is not allocated resources to fund NGOs and civil society projects. The Mail & Guardian should by now know this and should help bring clarity to, not confuse, those it purports to assist.
It is unfortunate that too often, on issues of gender, newspapers seem to present confused positions. We would welcome the presence of journalists such as Merten at committee meetings to engage on the issues involved. It is important that the M&G accepts responsibility for the damage caused by its inaccurate reporting in this article and offers a full apology and retraction to the committee.
Priscilla Themba, deputy chair of the joint monitoring committee on the improvement of the quality of life and status of women, prepared this response in consultation with all members of the committee