right to reply
Pregs Govender
The Mail & Guardian, in its article on the gender summit (“Gender activists slam government”, August 10), incorrectly reported that “funding was withdrawn from a parliamentary committee on women”. This was a factual inaccuracy that detracted from the crucial fact that it is gender budgeting that has been removed from the national budget. The key points on this, as presented to the summit, are summarised below.
South Africa began its first democracy in 1994 by committing itself to building non-racism and non-sexism. Simultaneously, it entered the global political economy.
The women’s movement (and the movement as a whole) had not envisaged the full implication of this move. The global world order is built on profit and greed. It is characterised by obscene wealth and growing poverty. Violence against women and the poor has increased and fundamentalism thrives. Escalating militarisation is underpinned by a self-perpetuating arms industry that defies logic.
The challenge is the extent to which our new democracy conforms to these global trends.
In 1994 the South African women’s movement started engaging within the state for the first time in herstory. How would we prevent dependence on political patronage and goodwill?
The “gender machinery” (of the movement in civil society, the Commission on Gender Equality, the Office of the Status of Women in the President’s Office and the Parliamentary Committee on Women) aimed at ensuring that all of society’s institutions dismantled the patriarchal power of fear and hate and the hierarchies of exclusion, invisibility and silence. Fundamental transformation required power redefined as love and courage, within ourselves as well as collectively.
Those in the “gender machinery” needed to use that power in the interests of the poorest women:
l To advance their cause, maintaining equilibrium, even when the patriarchy threatens or marginalises;
l To ensure the women’s movement is never reduced to ululating our patriarchs, either male or female.
Eighty percent of the legislative changes that we prioritised were enacted into law by the end of 1999. Yet women have continued to bear the brunt of poverty, HIV/Aids and violence. Thus a critical area of work since 1994 has involved the budget.
Collective effort resulted in the government committing itself to a gender component in the national budget review of 1998/1999. It agreed to take account of the burden of women’s gendered roles as the majority of the poorest, in planning budgets; to examine macroeconomic choices that determine the size of the budget and choices between and within departments.
Three types of spending must be scrutinised for gender equity: (1) employment equity spending; (2) spending targeted especially at women (such as Zanele Mbeki’s proposed women’s development fund) together, these two types of spending constitute less than 2% of most governments’ budgets); (3) “mainstream” spending the remaining 98%!
However in 2000 and 2001, gender budgeting has no longer been reflected in the national budget.
The budget debate of 1995 quotes Joe Nhlanhla, then minister of intelligence: “The greatest future threats to the South African people are poverty, unemployment … There is no foreseeable external military threat as far as South Africa is concerned. A realistic threat analysis may thus allow a democratic state to reallocate resources from the security establishment to socio-economic development.”
African National Congress policy, as reflected in the White Paper and the Defence Review, reiterated this position.
In 1996 the government committed itself to reducing military expenditure and reallocating funds to women’s empowerment. The implementation of this agreement would release the resources to save thousands of lives.
South Africa’s future generations need hard answers to the implications of South Africa’s estimated R35-billion to R50-billion arms debt. Reducing the deficit has been the argument against the increased social spending needed to redress apartheid’s impact. In reports to Parliament and budget speeches, ministries (such as health, justice and social development) say they lack the funds for the changes needed to break the cycles of poverty and violence.
The lesson: Follow the money to see the priorities of any local or global institution. It tells you who and what is really being valued!
The gender summit committed itself to reinstate the gender budget.
Pregs Govender, MP, is chair of Parliament’s joint monitoring committee on improvement of quality of life and status of women