Women should vote for empowerment

SOUTH Africa is in election mode although the general elections due next year have not yet been formally gazetted. There can be no other excuse for a president appearing on television – in his guise as a party leader – to express a party resolution on something as fundamental as land, before he has even taken this to Cabinet for discussion.

There is no rationale either for the leader of the official opposition to countenance a seven-month battle against one of the four executive metropolitan mayors that his party managed to elect, only to drop all disciplinary charges at the 11th hour of another bid to unseat her – despite having the necessary evidence. But why are we surprised? It was Women’s Day this week, the 62nd anniversary of a march when the women of this country rose up to fight for their rights and everyone elses.

Today the biggest fight women face is not being taken seriously in their own country – they’re wholly ignored in the battle against sexual and gender-based violence, which is why our crime rates in this area are scandalously high. Women are largely ignored politically too. In the loud, rancorous debate around land redistribution, not one salient policy has emerged to identify women as the key recipients of this latest iteration after the government’s woeful performance over the past 24 years.

If this country wants radical economic transformation it should start with the women of this country, the mothers of this nation, the nurturers, the providers.

This narrative, though, has been remarkable only because of its absence.

There was certainly little talk of it on Thursday when speakers mouthed their platitudes, and there certainly wasn’t anything of substance at Khensani Maseko’s funeral either.

Perhaps the solution lies in the vote. Next year, women – whose vote is actually of the same value as their male counterparts – should vote for those who have their best interests at heart. Sadly, the pickings are slim.