Address gender inequality head-on
“WHEN you strike the women, you strike a rock, you will be crushed, you will die!” This was the message from women of all colours and classes who converged on the Union Buildings in Pretoria on August 9, 1956 to tell then prime minister of the apartheid National Party government JG Strijdom that the women of South Africa, personally – in thousands of individually signed petitions – were saying no to pass laws being extended to them.
The march led by Sophia Williams-De Bruyn, Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa and Helen Joseph, drove Strijdom out of his office that day. It was a compelling demonstration of resilience and ingenuity in the fight against the pass laws, aimed at controlling and monitoring the movement of Africans older than 16.
People had to produce the dompas at any time when a state official ordered them to do so, or face arrest.
Williams-De Bruyn, the only one of the four leaders of the march still alive, was just 18 years old at the time, but already a trade union activist.
So long ago now, those were harsh but heady times when the ardent yearning for a better life for all inspired ordinary people to take extraordinary action. The pass laws were sharpened over the years by successive oppressive governments and reached their peak of refinement in the bizarrely named Natives Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act of 1952.
This act, in an amendment in 1956, extended the pass laws to women.
The pass laws have gone now, and every year we have marked that day when the women of our country told the apartheid-era National Party government that, by wanting to strike the women, they had struck a rock.
Discriminatory and oppressive laws have been abolished and in their place are more than 1 000 new laws aimed at supporting our democracy.
These laws, which came into being with our first non-racial democratic election in April 1994, are based on the values of the constitution: human dignity; human rights; equality and freedoms; non-racialism and non-sexism; supremacy of the constitution; and the rule of law. Many of them have provisions specifically aimed at addressing gender discrimination.
Since democracy there have been several advancements in women occupying leadership positions. Women head both Houses of Parliament. In May South Africa got its first female president of the Supreme Court of Appeal (Judge Mandisa Maya). About 35% of permanent judges are women. And women make up about 42% of the cabinet.
Women also constitute 57% of both houses of Parliament.
In the economy, gender mainstreaming strategies and laws, like the amended Employment Equity Act, are being used to rectify gender disparity. However, much remains to be done, and Parliament must inspire ways to address the gender inequality still prevalent in our economy and economies worldwide.
It is all very well to pass laws and to have facilitated public participation on their making, but what effect have these laws had on our lives and our aim of building a new society?
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the implementation of our constitution and the establishment of the National Council of Provinces.
In this, the 23rd anniversary of our first non-racial and democratic election, it is a most appropriate moment to assess the lawmaking of the past two decades, aimed at reshaping our apartheid-era and colonial society into the one envisaged in the constitution. It is an appropriate time to reflect on why, when we have so many new laws and policies to rectify our past, including its gender discrimination, the lived experiences of our people have not changed enough.
Why is it that we continue to occupy the unenviable position of being one of the countries with the biggest divide between the haves and have-nots – of which women constitute a significant number? Why, despite all our policies and laws to address gender discrimination, do women still suffer such high levels of physical violence and other manifestations of gender discrimination in work and other spheres of life?
Parliament has hosted a two-day international conference on the theme “Women in the Changing World of Work”. The 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women, held at the UN headquarters in March 2017, had a similar theme.
Our conference adopted a declaration which would inform discussions at the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2018, from a South African and African perspective.
The 1956 women’s anti-pass march highlighted the contribution of women in our struggle for freedom.
Since 1994, women have increasingly taken their place in top positions of the government and, to a lesser extent, the private sector of our country. Gender equality has not yet been entrenched, however.
“Wathint’ abafazi,wathint’ imbokodo,uza kufa!”
Mbete is Speaker of Parliament