Women councillors attend summit in Zambia

FEMALE councillors in Southern African Developing Countries (Sadc) recently held a regional councillors summit where the particpants made a call to address service delivery in local authorities and challenges faced by women in local governance.

The summit, the first of its kind, whose main aim was to empower women in leadership was held last week in Lusaka, Zambia under the theme, “Creating regional learning networks towards achieving gender equality in local government”.

Matabeleland region representative, Ward 17 councillor Sikhululekile Moyo in Bulawayo said in an interview with Sunday News that the summit taught them new ideas on how they could fully participate in issues to do with development as female councillors with a leaning towards nullifying negativity towards women in leadership.

“There are various ways in which we were taught on how to come up with strategies to retain our seats, ways to improve women representation in the Sadc region and also came up with solutions on challenges faced by women before and after elections.

“Women usually face a lot of challenges prior to elections especially with the systems used for registration where some women cannot even afford registration fees yet some may be funded by their parties thereby decreasing the number of women participating as they end up giving up entirely,” she said.

Clr Moyo urged women in leadership positions to soldier on and be hands-on to create a community that has equal opportunities.

“I therefore encourage female councillors to stand up and fight against lack of representation but for us to be able to achieve and implement this, we have to be more inclusive and engage other women in our communities to fully participate in 50/50 ward-based campaigns in order for our voices to be heard and put into action,” she added.

Clr Moyo said female councillors should be able to develop their wards using council, Government, community and non-governmental funds because without anything tangible their voices could never be heard.

“As female councillors we have no reliable and sustainable funding to support our programmes and operations to champion gender mainstreaming in our local authorities. Lack of support from fellow women makes it hard for us to be influential and it contributes to the dropping levels of women in representative positions. Women should join forces in lobbying and advocating for the full implementation of Section 17 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which talks about full participation of women in all spheres of governance,” said Clr Moyo.

Other countries that participated in this year’s summit included Zambia the hosts, Malawi and Mauritius. — @loxtiongodess