SANF 04 no 107
SADC governments elected into office in 2004 clearly showed their commitment to the 2005 targets set by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in its 1997 Declaration on Gender and Development, although the electorate did not always support them on this issue.
The most notable case was Botswana, where the general elections on 30 October saw a sharp drop in the number of women elected to parliament, down from seven in the previous parliament to four. Only 12 women candidates contested the elections.
Although heavily criticized for being the laggard in reaching regional gender targets, trailing all but Mauritius, President Festus Mogae used his prerogative to redeem the situation by appointing women to three of the four nominated seats for non-constituency MPs, thus bringing the number back up to seven.
He then took another significant step by appointing four women cabinet ministers out of a total of 14 full ministers. This means that 28.6 percent of the cabinet positions in Botswana are held by women.
In addition, Mogae gave arguably the most important cabinet post in the country at the present time to a women, that of Health, to Professor Shiela Tlou.
Elections in Namibia on 15-16 November resulted in a small decrease in the number of women elected to the National Assembly, the country’s parliament. Namibia now has 18 women in the 72-seat Assembly, 25 percent, compared to 21 women elected (29 percent) in 1999 and nine percent in 1994.
Women representation in cabinet stands at 18.5 percent and that will remain the case until the new cabinet is appointed in March 2005.
In the previous round of elections in the region only Mozambique and South Africa outperformed Namibia, which was ranked 23 in the world for the proportion of women representatives in parliament.
However, women’s groups campaigned tirelessly to have government introduce legislation ensuring that 50 per cent of candidates are women in future elections.
Women constitute 51 percent of the country’s 1.9 million population, and 52 percent of the over 900,000-strong electorate.
Significant progress has been made at the grassroots level. The May 2004 Local Authority elections turned out a resounding 43 per cent. Women gained 123 seats of the 283 available countrywide – up from 41.3 per cent at the 1998 election.
Women are in the majority on 13 councils, and they have been impressive in the way they are discharging their duties.
In Mozambique, the representation of women in the outgoing National Assembly was 31.2 percent, while cabinet was at 13.04 percent. This is set to change after the 1-2 December presidential and parliamentary elections.
Mozambique has the distinction of being the first country in the SADC region to appoint a woman Prime Minister, Luisa Diogo, who also holds the Finance portfolio.
Malawi and South Africa both increased the representation of women in parliament, in their elections held earlier this year, to 17 percent (from 8 percent) and 32.8 percent (from 30 percent) respectively.
In the current government in Malawi, 25 percent of the cabinet members are women, and in South Africa, the women representation in cabinet has reached an all-time high of 43 percent.
Zimbabwe, which has been implementing a controversial land reform programme aimed at resettling the majority rural population onto arable land, threw its hat into the ring in late November with the nomination of a woman, Joyce Mujuru, for one of the two vice-presidents of the ruling party and the country. Mujuru is currently the Minister of Water Resources and Infrastructural Development.
Parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe are expected in March 2005. (SARDC)
