Namibia is extremely proud of advocate Philomina Bience Gawanas being one of the five women appointed to the Commission of the African Union.
The Namibian champion of human rights and women’s empowerment handles the social affairs portfolio in the union’s secretariat.
Last month in Addis Ababa — the seat of the AU — she participated passionately in a conference against female genital mutilation.
Gawanas said that the AU had established legal frameworks towards helping to enforce a continent-wide ban on this evil.
However, she went on to note that only a handful of African governments — 16 — had bothered to ratify the laws and introduce them into their domestic legislation. Gawanas said the AU had embarked in a ”large-scale” campaign to persuade African governments to sign up.
Without their commitment, she told the conference, legal and policy instruments to combat violence against women were just ”dead letters”.
The Namibian Women’s Action Development (WAD) hailed the landmark appointment of Gawanas, its first chairperson.
”Advocate Gawanas’s impressive career is particularly important for [the] WAD because it is a living example of what a woman from a deprived background can achieve,” said Veronica de Klerk, the executive director of the WAD.
De Klerk described Gawanas as fearless and expressed the confidence that she would make a huge contribution to the socio-political empowerment of African women despite the fact that no country on Earth has yet achieved full gender equality.
Addressing a Lutheran World Federation conference on healing in Okahandja last year, Gawanas gave the audience her personal stories of healing and forgiveness.
”To heal your family or community you first have to heal yourself,” she said. ”And to heal yourself, the first step is to talk about your feelings.”
Gawanas encouraged the women to speak out, even if this might be unfamiliar to those living in traditional communities.
”African societies are still very much community-orientated, and you are not encouraged to express your individual feelings,” she said. ”But in modern society, it is important that we learn to talk about ourselves, state our needs and fears and become more assertive and independent.
”Such statements are in a way contradictory to the African philosophy of ubuntu, which says ‘I am because of you.’ But we must find a balance between the expression of our own individual feelings on the one hand and our strong African orientation toward the community on the other.”
Gawanas established her reputation as a gender law lecturer at the University of Namibia, an advocate for the Namibian High Court and a fighter against social injustice.
Her legal knowledge was applied to advocating policies and laws on human rights, development, governance and gender issues. Gawanas has always keenly backed projects supporting the development of women and children.
In 1996, while secretary general of the Namibia Women’s Organisation, Gawanas was appointed national ombudswoman.
As ombudswoman — a constitutional post monitoring good performance in public administration, human rights and corruption — she drove the transformation of the office, making it a model for several African countries.
A lifelong political activist, she was a founder member of the Lawyers against Apartheid while in exile in London.
She also has a master’s degree in business administration, specialising in corporate governance, ethics and strategic management. Gawanas lectures on this subject whenever she finds a window in her schedule and actively participates in international seminars and conferences on human rights, women, law, gender, governance and development.
Gawanas has maintained a close contact with community groups, particularly the minority communities such as the San. In supporting people with special needs, she became patron of the National Federation of Persons with Disabilities in Namibia.
She was a board member of the Southern African Regional Institute for Policy Studies and the Bank of Namibia for two years. She also chaired her country’s law reform development commission.