At the heart of the matter

Submitted by Lynne Brown

This week’s battle about gender is not simply a fight between two women or two political parties. The gender issue is a human-rights matter, a complex subject that is of concern to all South Africans.

Studies have shown that there is a direct link between a country’s attitude towards women and its progress socially and economically. It is for this reason that South Africa, with its highly racialised and gendered past, has to be careful about how we construct the path we choose so that we improve the quality of all our peoples’ lives including women, people living with disabilities, children and other vulnerable groups.

I am sad that a matter as important as gender equality has become so horribly personalised and resulted in dirty political mudslinging. I’m ashamed that the level of political discourse on the subject has been dragged into the gutter. I want to elevate the discussion once more, and place on it the importance it deserves considering our developing democracy.

Colleen Lowe Morna, executive director of Gender Links, puts it succinctly: “Sexist slurs skirt the issues.” Lowe Morna then writes: “Gender Links also supports the action taken by the Congress of South African Trade Unions to lodge complaints with the Human Rights Commission, the Public Protector and the Equality Court about the composition of Zille’s cabinet, and the action taken by Mbuyiselo Botha of Sonke Gender Justice to lodge a case with the Equality Court against ANC Youth League Leader Julius Malema for an earlier comment about women who have been raped not asking for taxi money in the morning. Using these bodies established by the Constitution and the law to advance gender equality is precisely the kind of action that is required in the present circumstances; not cheap political point scoring.”

I concur. That is why I am outraged at the fact that Premier Helen Zille has seen fit to drop the provincial legislature’s standing committee on the status of women.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that women represent 53% of the Western Cape’s population. At the same time, we live on a daily basis with appalling acts of violence against women and children. We live in a society where women battle to get maintenance paid by errant fathers. We watch aghast as the overcrowded and overstretched courts take years to try men accused of rape. And then the courts cannot guarantee the conviction of rapists. The numbers of women living with HIV/Aids continue to grow. Their children are left vulnerable when they die, leaving pre-pubescent kids to head up households.

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need a standing committee on the status of women. In a fair and just society, we wouldn’t need a ministry created especially to deal with issues around women, children and the vulnerable. But the Western Cape — and South Africa — is both far from being ideal worlds. We are a flawed society, battling with our apartheid and patriarchal pasts. And while we have made enormous progress, we have a long way to go. We do still have to pay special attention to gender issues through setting up institutions to monitor our progress, and attempt to right the wrongs in our culture.

This is not a personal matter, and yet it is a personal matter. For me, as a young girl growing up in Mitchell’s Plain with a mother who worked as a domestic worker and then for a retail store and a dad who was a truck driver, I had to see examples of women progressing in the world so that I could dream bigger dreams for my life.

I only had to see the oppression and exploitation my parents suffered to know that they wanted better for me and my siblings and I could see that I did not want the absolute drudgery of their lives. My church introduced to me to an activism that led me to the ANC, and gave me an opportunity to help improve the quality of women’s lives. There I met strong women like Virginia Engel, the late Dorothy Zihlangu and Mfaco, Mary Burton, Jenny Schreiner and many, many others.

These women continue to inspire me. I implore Premier Helen Zille to remember the past by looking to the future. Our future depends on our commitment to strengthen women’s role in the structures of government.

We must work together to ensure a future for our girls and boys, so that it is better for them. They must not be subjected to the cruelty women and children suffer because of attitudes — rape, child abuse, violence against women, glass ceilings that keep women from progressing at work, teenage pregnancies — all these that affect our families and communities are direct results of the attitude our institutions have towards women. Gender equality and representation of women within all the institutions in our society is absolutely crucial to our wellbeing.

Brown is the former premier of the Western Cape, now leader of the opposition in the provincial government of the Western Cape