by Grace Kwinjeh
It became a matter of principle and duty that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) place women on the agenda, during the Consultative Conference in Namibia earlier this month.
It was also a time of triumph for the women of the region that the regional body had finally adopted a comprehensive set of recommendations to make gender an important element in the SADC Programme of Action and Community Building.
This outcome is a result of a long process of meetings and consultations between National Women’s Machineries (NWM), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and donor agencies.
The momentum created during the Women World Conference in Beijing was carried over by women in the region through a regional gender task force including government and NGO representatives which was fanned at a regional post-Beijing workshop in 1995.
A meeting of the task force in Botswana in 1996 identified four priority areas for advancing gender equality in the region. Among these was the need to strengthen institutional mechanisms for advancing gender equality.
A mini Plan of Action was adopted detailing immediate activities, which included, the securing of time preceding the 1997 Council of Ministers Meeting with the aim of drawing the attention of ministers to the importance of gender in the development of the SADC Programme of Action and Community Building Initiative.
A SADC Gender Strategy Workshop was held in South Africa in January 1997. The workshop observed the need for a regional policy on gender taking into account that even though all the countries in the region have ratified or are in the process of ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), there is still no regional institutional structure for mainstreaming gender.
In her presentation to the Gender Strategy Workshop, Head of Programme for Women In Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA), Bookie Kethusegile said women in southern Africa remain largely marginalised, uninformed and under-represented in development activities.
A position paper with recommendations from the Gender Strategy Workshop was presented to the council of Ministers by the Minister of Labour and Home Affairs of Botswana which is the regional gender focal point. The recommendations included that SADC:
• Places gender firmly on the agenda of its Programme of Action and Community Building Initiative through:
– a Declaration to this effect by Heads of State and Government at their next Summit in August 1997; and
– the designation of “Gender and Development” as the SADC theme in the earliest possible year, not later than the year 2000.
– Establishes a policy framework for mainstreaming gender in all its activities, and in strengthening the efforts by member countries to achieve gender equality by:
– recognising that gender is a cross cutting issue that needs to be taken into account in all areas of endeavour, but that requires deliberate interventions and mechanisms to ensure that this takes place;
– giving gender and development specific recognition as an Area of Co-operation under Article 12 (3) of the SADC Treaty and Protocol;
-concluding a Protocol on Gender and Development as provided for in Article 22 of the Treaty.
The President of Namibia, Sam Nujoma gave his country position during his opening remarks. “Namibia supports all these recommendations as well as the proposal for the establishment of a gender unit within the SADC structure.”
The South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfred Nzo, who chaired the meeting, reaffirmed the need for gender equality and the full engagement of the majority of populations in the process of governance.
“I am happy to announce that at our Council of Ministers meeting preceeding this conference, we adopted a comprehensive Gender Programme that will cut across all structures and programmes of SADC to ensure that gender issues are always given the priority consideration that they deserve.”
SADC’s intention to consider seriously gender issues was first mooted during the Council of Ministers Meeting in 1987 where participants took cognisance of the crucial role women play in society and mandated the secretariat to explore the best ways to incorporate gender issues in the SADC programme.
The United Nations Women’s Fund (UNIFEM) in consultation with SADC developed a programme in 1992 aimed at assisting the organisation to mainstream gender into its programme of action.
For Nomcebo Manzini, the UNIFEM-SADC Gender Programme Manager, the outcome of events during the Consultative Conference is definitely the way forward. “It is a historic moment for us, a culmination of all the effort and hard work that has achieved something for us,” she said.
The theme of the Consultative Conference was “Productivity-Key to Sustainable Development in SADC”, a subject which cannot be discussed without looking at the role of women in development.
Athalia Molokome, the leader of Emang Basadi, an NGO in Botswana, noted in her paper during the SADC Gender Strategy Workshop that gender inequality hampers development, “incorporating gender concerns into development planning is a more cost effective use of human and financial resources.”
The participants agreed that sustainable development is not possible if women who constitute more than half of the SADC population have no opportunity to use their potential because the development programmes at SADC level are gender unfriendly, and that decisions about changing the “lives of people” are taken without the participation of half of the lives that need to be changed.
As a member of parliament in South Africa, Thenjiwe Mtintso, said in her paper during the Gender Strategy Workshop, “SADC has to realise that the current epoch, proudly paraded in the apparel of democracy is far from being democratic.”
The SADC Consultative Conference proved to be a vital platform for addressing gender equity in southern Africa and for making commitments in this regard. (SARDC)
