Those who attack the Mail & Guardian‘s stance on Israel as anti-Semitic may be surprised to learn that our hero of the week — indeed, a man for all seasons — is Jewish. He is Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli scientist released on Wednesday after an 18-year jail term for treason and espionage imposed for blowing the whistle on Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme. Serving most of his sentence in solitary confinement, with his cell light permanently blazing, Vanunu remains steadfast in his stand of conscience against both nuclear proliferation and the threat Israel posed, and still poses, to regional and world peace. He continues to suffer for his convictions in a way familiar to South Africans who experienced apartheid. He is banned from leaving his home town without notifying the police, and prevented from talking to foreigners and travelling abroad.
Vanunu, a Nobel Prize nominee, is more than a champion of world peace. He struck a signal blow for transparency in government for which journalists everywhere will be admiring and grateful. Without ordinary men and women prepared to suffer in the service of the truth, there can be no ”fourth estate”.
It is important for South Africans to realise that Vanunu is not alone, and that local cheerleaders for Ariel Sharon, including the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the South African Zionist Federation, are not the sole representatives of Jewish opinion.
There are many members of the Jewish community who hold opinions that exemplify jewry’s political diversity. And although Israel’s mainstream peace movement, Peace Now, has faded in recent years, brave members of the radical grouping Gush Shalom (”the settlement of peace”) and the ”refuseniks”, who refuse to serve in the Israeli army in protest against its human rights abuses, keep the torch of dissent burning.
In a statement released on the Internet this week, Gush Shalom described Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi as ”a lethal provocation”. The statement continues: ”Today’s unscrupulous assassination is but the latest of the daily killings which accompany the hollow words about withdrawal [from the occupied territories]. And Sharon also uses naked force on the diplomatic level — the Palestinians are addressed only through ultimatums and dictates. Sharon seems to be doing everything to convince them that they have no option left but suicidal forms of revenge.”
We agree.
Sing out sistuh
Four women premiers out of nine. Wow! More than one in three members of parliament are women. Wow! South Africa is now number 11 on the world rankings of women parliamentarians. Wow!
Indeed, these are milestones. They mark a country that sees leadership beyond the masculine form; they offer a tantalising future in which patriarchy in all its manifestations can be shrugged off. Imagine a future where women and girls can walk safely in the day and at night? A future where rape is not an everyday occurrence and where each incident is a national scandal — where every perpetrator is detected, caught, tried and jailed.
We have a long way to walk to reach such a future and the numbers of women leaders are milestones on that road. But are numbers enough and does the gender quota make a difference?
There are notable exceptions, but on the whole, elected women representatives have become a disappointing bunch when viewed through a gendered lens.ÂÂ
There was political energy and gender verve in the first term, when a plethora of legislation designed to begin untangling the web of patriarchy was passed. But many women MPs have not exhibited the wow factor when oversight of the government was needed. We have not witnessed women MPs hauling ministers over the coals for not funding the sexual offences criminal justice system properly, or questioning why female entrepreneurs find it so very difficult to access finance from state agencies.
Moreover, many women MPs have failed to rise above the party political parapet to take on their parties when they need to. Where were the one in three ANC MPs when the party danced its deathly denialist waltz with HIV/Aids dissidents?
How did the communal land rights laws which secure the power of chiefs get passed in the 21st century? And why did it take Zackie Achmat (a man) and his Treatment Action Campaign to set things straight when health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (a woman) held the power to do so?
These are tough questions that bear scrutiny before we all become praise-singers and lobbyists for the next gender big-ticket — the 50/50 campaign to achieve parity between the sexes across the three levels of government.ÂÂ
The sistuhs must sing for their suppers. The campaign should win no easy backing, and it will not get it from this newspaper.