South Africa has taken a giant step towards the goal of gender equality and the emancipation of women in the recent municipal election, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
The results of the March 1 election make an important statement about the success the African National Congress has achieved to increase the numbers of women in the municipal system, he said in his weekly newsletter on the party’s website.
The best-performing provinces in this regard, with between 50,5% and 54% of elected ANC councillors being women, are the Northern Cape, Gauteng and the North West.
Those with between 48,8% and 45% are Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape and Free State.
The Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are the worst-performing provinces, with 39,7% and 35% respectively.
Nationally, 46,08% of ANC councillors are women. Mbeki said, significantly, only just more than 40% of these are ward councillors.
Nationally, women constitute about 40% of all councillors. Of these, 78,7% are ANC women councillors.
”Even in our worst-performing provinces, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, we still made an important contribution to the total number of women elected in these provinces. The relevant figures in this regard are 49,4% and 52,6% respectively.”
These figures confirm the national impact of the ANC decision to increase women’s representation, and the countervailing effect inflicted on the country by the other parties, which made little effort to strive for gender equality.
”The outstanding results we achieved in the Northern Cape, Gauteng and the North West demonstrate that, given the will, it is indeed possible for us to achieve the objectives we set ourselves with regard to advancing the cause of gender equality, which is a fundamental component part of our movement’s outlook and programme,” he said.
”None of us, including our leadership in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, can express satisfaction with the results we achieved in these two provinces.
”It is true that ever since our liberation in 1994, to date, these provinces have presented us with the most serious challenge in our political struggle to secure the support and allegiance of the masses of the people.
”Our poor performance with regard to achieving gender equality in these two provinces in terms of our elected councillors, unfortunately communicates the clear message that we have continued to treat the matter of women’s emancipation as a hindrance or an ‘add-on’ to our struggle to emerge as the majority political formation in these provinces.”
This is also reflected in the proportion of women ward councillors.
The figures for the Northern Cape and the North West are 55,6% and 49% respectively: those for the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are 31,4% and 21,4%.
But, none of this subtracts from the great blow the ANC struck for women’s emancipation and genuine democracy, reflected in the large number of women that will now sit as leaders of their communities in the critically important sphere of local government, Mbeki said. — Sapa