Women’s concerns have been drowned out of these elections by their unspecific inclusion under the big-ticket banners of poverty, unemployment, education and HIV/Aids.
In general, women’s concerns and gender issues are mentioned in the political party’s election manifestos simply as a part of grander (hackneyed) political equations.
None of the political parties offer plans to address problems and issues that they acknowledge are endemic to women: rape, abuse and poverty. Women’sNet, an online support network for women, in partnership with the Commission for Gender Equality, gave political parties an opportunity to ”tell women why they should get their vote”, last Friday.
The debate was at best tepid and predictable. After reading the manifestos, one is left with a mental picture of politicians wringing their hands proudly simply because they mention ”gender”.
The Democratic Alliance mentions the words ”gender” and ”woman” once each in its manifesto: ”Get to grips with the roots of the epidemic [HIV/Aids] by entrenching tolerance and promoting gender equality”, and ”… every man, woman and child must be given a chance to fulfill his potential and to reach her destination”.
In fairness, the party does have an inclusive socio-economic policy with a ”womanist” agenda under crime, employment and service delivery.
The African National Congress scored a B+ from Women’sNet for its gender provision, making it the best of a bad bunch. In the socio- economic realm, access to credit for women and children is punted, violence against women is mentioned but solutions are limited. Women’s access to land is mentioned, but there is an under-emphasis on rural women.
The Inkatha Freedom Party’s manifesto is more prolific on gender concerns and has an explicit ”Women’s Issues” policy, which encourages gender equality by acknowledging the age-old cultural traditions between men and women.
The Independent Democrats are also robust and offer a specific policy on women and child abuse. The ID’s manifesto includes the establishment of a Common Rape Protocol to ”include a minimum ethical and moral standard of practice into which the rape survivor is immediately entered”.
It also emphasises greater community upliftment initiatives to ”break the silence” on HIV/Aids and abuse against women.
But if these were little sparks of hope for South Africa’s women, they were extinguished by the political party representatives taking part in the dialogue. The ANC’s Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzi believes the organisation’s gender policy is complete — and all it needs to do it strengthen implementation through the ”people’s contract”.
The African Christian Democratic Party’s Mummsy Mntande encouraged all women to be ”who God called them to be”.
The DA’s Janet Semple smugly waved a booklet around called Starting Your Own Business to make women ”self-sufficient”.
The New National Party’s Berenice Venter reinforced her party’s pearl: to create a feeding fund using Lotto money. The ideas of the remaining parties — Azapo, UDM and PAC — simply failed to inspire interest.
The civil organisations and social movements represented on the panel — the Aids Consortium, People Opposing Women Abuse, Women’sNet, the National Land Committee (NLC) and the Anti- Privatisation Forum — accused the parties of being effete.
”It’s very sad that the political parties have chosen to score points on gender,” said Sharon Ekambaram from the Aids Consortium. ”On this issue parties should be working together rather than cashing in on each others’ weaknesses. There is simply nothing new.”
The harshest criticism, which was buoyed with confirmatory cheers from the rest of the floor, came from Florence Cairncross, a member of the NLC board. She said that if these party representatives were a microcosm of women’s calibre in this country then she is ”extremely concerned about the level of women’s leadership emerging to challenge the balance of power”.
Her comments highlighted the gap between the need for more female representation in power and the low levels of talented, young female politicians. Currently there is 30% female representation in South Africa’s Parliament — one of the largest blocs in the world.
In terms of the campaign to ensure that half of all political representatives are women, this percentage should increase to 50% by 2005.
But, given the seemingly dehydrated pool of effective woman leaders, will this campaign simply become a game of lists and quotas? While 10 out of the 27 South African ministers are women, questions have been asked about their effectiveness in genuinely furthering the interests of their gender.
It is in the nature of electioneering for political parties to clutter the ether with promises.
Women represent the largest tranche of registered voters at 54,75%. However, while this percentage is unlikely to hold any political sway in this election, it does raise the possibility of a shift towards a more independent female vote further down the line.
Writing in Election Synopsis, Kristina Bentley, a research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council, argues: ”The significance of the women’s electoral majority is muffled by the clamour of the politics of race and other aspects of identity — increasingly importantly, class — at the national level [but during the local government elections in 2005] wooing [these] female voters more specifically becomes not only possible, but extremely significant.”