A longer walk for women
But NEC must have 50-50 gender parity
ANC leader Lindiwe Zulu says the gender imbalance in the party’s newly elected top six shows the ANC’s Women’s League it still has a long journey ahead and that they will have to make up for having only one female representative.
Zulu said although she was disappointed with the election outcome‚ there would be a concerted effort to get more women in the national executive committee (NEC)‚ which is required to achieve a 50-50 gender parity.
“We are disappointed with the fact that there is only one woman in the top six and we feel it’s a step back for us. We go back to the trenches as women to see where it is that we didn’t do right in ensuring that we’ve got more women because we had two women in the previous official structure and now we have one‚” said Zulu. She said although the league’s preferred candidate‚ Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma‚ did not win the presidential race they would rally behind new president Cyril Ramaphosa and his structure.
“It has to be a united top six because the ANC has no chance of succeeding if we don’t rally behind the leadership that was elected. The branches have spoken and we need to respect the results as they were‚” added Zulu.
“We have said if anyone has any issues they need to take it to the steering committee.”
Zulu‚ currently Minister of Small Business Development‚ said women’s struggles in the ANC had failed to gain traction in the party because they were reduced merely to issues of representation in party structures. She called for a broader struggle, adding: “If we separate the struggles of women and make them an issue for the ANC top six‚ rather than societal issues‚ then we will keep losing.”
ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini said the organisation “cannot be proud of this outcome”‚ and that the ANC had failed the women of South Africa.
“The ANC has to take a decision about how women are going to be affirmed. The ANC has indeed regressed on the issue of women. We cannot be proud of this outcome [because] patriarchy has once again reared its ugly head‚” said Dlamini.
To emphasise the league’s displeasure with the dominance of men in the party‚ Dlamini said deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte would not have made it had she competed against a man.
“Comrade Jessie stood against another woman. If she had stood against a man‚ she would have been thrown under the bus.” — DDC