When ‘ticking all the boxes’ is not enough

OIf the spreadsheet is taken at face value, no candidate meets the criterion

n Tuesday the parliamentary portfolio committee on women, youth and people with disabilities met to prepare for its interviews with the 24 potential commissioners for the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE). But first two letters objecting to the committee’s minimalist approach to parliament’s constitutional obligation to ensure public participation in its processes had to be dealt with.

“The process was not flawed,” said one MP. “We have ticked all the boxes,” agreed another. And that is exactly the problem: reducing participatory democracy to an exercise in box-ticking. The Constitutional Court’s approach to public participation stands in contrast to that of the committee: “All parties interested in legislation should feel that they have been given a real opportunity to have their say.”

Being given a real opportunity to have a say is no less applicable to the appointment of CGE commissioners, who are, after all, tasked with recommending and commenting on laws affecting gender equality and the status of women.

Liaising with civil society organisations which promote gender equality is one of the CGE’s legislated functions. But limiting the ability of the CGE’s possible constituents to participate in the choice of commissioners potentially undermines its ability to effectively accomplish this function.

The choice of commissioner also has a direct effect on some groups of women. Under the current commissioners the CGE’s investigation into the coerced sterilisation of HIVpositive women has fallen by the wayside. The 2018 investigation into domestic violence shelters has withered.

The CGE failed to make a submission on the extension of maternity benefits to women in the informal sector. Nor did it make a submission on the hate crimes bill, which aims to offer key protections to LGBTQ+ people.

Who is appointed a commissioner matters and the ability to make meaningful recommendations about their suitability is at the heart of the objection in the letter signed by 45 organisations and 17 individuals.

Parliament routinely makes available redacted CVs when calling for submissions on appointments. But the committee refused to provide these and created a spreadsheet summarising candidates’ qualifications instead.

Knowledge of, and commitment to, addressing gender equality are the two criteria candidates must meet.

Both are impossible to assess from a list of qualifications.

If the spreadsheet is taken at face value, no candidate meets the knowledge criterion. The approach also works against candidates. Candidate 5, for example, has a degree in public administration. Checking

LinkedIn shows him to be an

“administrator ANC constituency office”. The ANC would appear to be the chief expertise of candidates 9 and 13, as the only trace of their existence on the internet is the ANC lists for the 2019 and 2021 elections.

Perhaps all three have a history of gender activism — but we can’t know this without their CVs. Instead, their inclusion looks like yet another opportunity for cadre deployment.

“Politically appointed commissioners” were identified as a major cause of the CGE’s dysfunction in a 2021 letter to the speaker of parliament.

There has been no action from the speaker’s office. This is a theme. In 2021 the then CEO also wrote to the speaker detailing commissioners’ interference in her work, and how the committee was enabling this. The speaker referred the complaint back to the committee. In August 2022 the CEO was axed by commissioners.

A commissioner also wrote to the speaker in 2021 to allege interference by the committee in the CGE’s work. Again, the complaint was referred back to the parliamentary committee’s chair. The chair’s minutes for May 2022 show discussion between commissioners and the committee about disciplining that commissioner. The committee has, nonetheless, recognised the CGE’s dysfunction. Given these doubts, it is short-sighted to have denied groups whose daily work promotes gender equality the opportunity to provide substantive commentary about the shortlist.

The committee also missed the chance to apply the Zondo commission’s recommendation to committees to forge relationships with civil society that will assist their work.

The fight over public participation is not over. At stake is democracy, gender equality, and the state of parliament.

✼ Lisa Vetten is a research and project consultant to the ‘Gendered Violence and Urban Transformation in India and SA’ study, University of Johannesburg, and a research associate at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, Wits University. She is a signatory to the letter objecting to the committee’s approach to public participation. ✼Peter Bruce is on leave