by Kudzai Makombe
Parliamentary elections taking place in southern Africa over the last two years – and still to come – are making women’s participation in the political process the buzzword.
The involvement of governments and women’s organisations in preparations for the forthcoming Beijing Fourth UN World Conference for Women has also assisted in bringing the issue to the political forefront at national, regional and international levels.
According to Jodi Jacobson, a Worldwatch researcher, “Worldwide, women comprise only ten percent of members of parliament. Throughout the world, at ministerial level, women hold only four percent of positions.” Considering that women are the majority voters in most countries it is ironic how long it has taken for women’s political participation to come to the fore.
The newest democratic states in southern Africa are setting the trend for women in political decision making. With a 26 per female representation in parliament, Mozambique is right up there among the world’s top ten countries with the most female MPs.
South Africa comes a close second at 24 percent, taking third place to the Seychelles’ 46 percent as a top ranker both in the South and globally. Observers would say that the heavy involvement of women in the civic organisations opposed to the apartheid regime has been instrumental in giving women the confidence to compete in the electoral process.
Elsewhere in the region, in the elections held in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 1994 and 1995, there has been an improvement as more women stood for, and were elected, to parliament. For instance. 29 women contested Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections and a record 20 made it.
An additional two women were appointed non·constituent MPs by President Robert Mugabe, making for a total of 22 women parliamentarians (14.6%) out of ISO MPs.
While in percentage terms this may not seem like much, the obstacles for these few women to get into parliament are huge. For the majority of women in southern Africa, the process of participating in politics, is very much determined by a patriarchal set of values which hinder women from getting to the top.
First, and probably most important, women have little access to the (largely male dominated) networks which arc the source of support and resources that arc vital for entering the playing field. “The reality is that a lot of decisions affecting society as a whole get made over whiskies in a pub by members of the old-boys club,” says ANC MP Pregs Govender. ‘”Women lack the same networks and don’t operate like that.”
It is also difficult to persuade women to run for elections as most feel they are just too busy running the home, or they fear losing their jobs, or, in some cases even believe that women have no business being in leadership positions.
As a result, the few women who are prepared to run for elections are career women with political aspirations or a great deal of commitment to the women’s cause. These women too have a lot to Lose, especially considering how the additional burden for most, of being mother and wife, places them in a weaker position than their male counterparts.
Female South African MPs are faced regularly with the difficulty of leaving their families for extended periods of time to attend sessions in Cape Town. Child care and secretarial and research assistance in the course of their jobs arc their present struggle.
ANC MP Jenny Schreiner points out that, “Parliament functions on the assumption that those who work there all have someone at home – someone who will bear and rear the children, run the household, buy the groceries, even organize their social life. In other words, a wife.”
“The whole political culture and style is male dominated and alien to women,” says Jacobson.
The struggle does not end at getting into parliament and juggling the different roles. Being appointed to cabinet is a rare phenomenon for women in this region.
Zimbabwe bas only two female cabinet ministers out of a 24·member cabinet and, despite the ANC W001CD holding 26 per cent of the seats in parliament, only three of them are in the 27-member cabinet. During President Mugabe’s 1994 “Meet the People Tours”, he was confronted with the question of why there are so few women in cabinet. His response was that there are few women in parliament to select from in the first place.
Gill Marcus, ANC MP and member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee feels that the number of women in the South African cabinet does not contradict the fact that women are well-represented in parliament. She is quoted by a South African women’s monthly, Femina, as saying, “I’m not hooked on numbers. If you’re putting women in very senior positions, I want to be sure that you’ve put them there not because you want more women, but because they’re competent.”
There is a trend toward this effect taking place in the region as female appointments to cabinet are changing for the better and there are more qualified and competent women to select from. Where previously the women appointed to cabinet were given traditional female postings such as Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Youth or Welfare, women are now receiving higher profile positions.
Until Sankie Nkondo was appointed Minister of Housing following the death of Joe Slovo in South Africa, the highest profile position held by a woman in southern Africa was that of Foreign Affairs Minister of Botswana. Now women hold portfolios such as Public Enterprises, Oil, health, Fishing, and Education throughout the region.
Most remarkably, the Speaker of the National Assembly in South Africa is a woman, as is the
Deputy Speaker in Zimbabwe.
While there has been a lot of progress over the last few years toward getting women’s participation in politics, there is still need to get even more of them into parliament.
This need must be addressed if women are to fully participate and be recognised as contributing fully to development. Affirmative action through party quota systems may be one of the answers to getting more women to parliament.
However, this needs to be approached with some caution. While this system was successful in the South African elections, some MPs at a recent workshop to explore the needs and options for a Southern Africa Regional Information and Research Network for Members of Parliament, held in Harare, voiced concern that the quota system could lead to resentment among other MPs.
Zimbabwean MP Aeneas Chigwedere noted that changing attitudes is not something to be done through affirmative action but should begin from an early age. ‘We are not using our education (systems) for social purposes,” he says. According to Chigwedere, women’s NGOs arc not doing enough to instill gender awareness, particularly to children. Because those MPs who are in parliament have not been educated on gender issues one cannot expect attitude change to come easily.
According to Marcus, having a quota in general terms forces one to consider women, but being rigid leads to tokenism. “I’m not dismissing the importance of numbers but I’d hate to see the introduction of rigid quotas.” There is another side to the coin, that of increasing women’s political participation by addressing the question of women as voters.
Lack of education, social, economic and political empowerment are factors which restrict women’s ability to cast an informed vote and thereby fully participate in the political process. The majority of women in the rural areas do not have the education to vote for change or improvement in their lifestyles.
One of the difficulties this raises is the question of whether those women who are elected to parliament have the right to represent the disempowered women whose needs may be different from their own.
‘”Are we going to sit back and do nothing because we think we have no right to represent the disempowered women? Those women also have aspirations and if we as empowered women do not take up the responsibility of raising their consciousness and assisting them to realise these aspirations then who will?” questioned an NGO participant during a recent discussion held in Harare on women’s participation at local government level.
In spite of all the constraints, the countries in southern Africa are beginning to take action toward increasing women’s participation in the political process and the women are making it happen off course.
More still needs to be done however, and perhaps what is of greatest concern is the Jack of commitment being shown by the sub-regional, regional and international policy-making bodies at implementation level. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations (UN) are lagging in their promotion of women’s participation.
As Patricia Daley, writing for Africa Analysis, says, “Although some people would argue that the OAU is a reflection of its member states, nevertheless the organization could provide a more enabling environment … ” (SARDC)
