A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF PRESIDENT MBEKI
editor@pambazuka.org

Gender & Trade Network in Africa

The Gender and Trade Network in Africa (GENTA) write an open letter
to President Mbeki of South Africa criticising his failure to address
gender issues in his economic development and poverty alleviation
policies.


Dear Mr. President,

We as African women awaited your speech with interest and with open
minds. We hoped that you would speak to our aspirations and make
significant pronouncements on interventions intended to advance our
citizenship as South African women during the mid term of this
government. When you spoke of the 'stench of living' we could relate
because many of us live with this stench. What sounded like a robust
recommitment to tangible poverty eradication was weighed down by the
market driven imperatives obscured by a pretty but ultimately empty
rhetoric. An excellent opportunity to leave an outstanding legacy to
the women and men of this country has been lost.

There is no doubt that the economy is growing. There is also no doubt
that South Africa is an environment attractive to investors. However
this growth is not translating into improved lives for the majority
of people in this country especially women who are largely the least
skilled, the lowest paid and the ones whose labour is the easiest to
barter to foreign investors. It is extremely worrying that in the
same breath President you speak of eradicating poverty and then
suggest that a more flexible investment environment is needed to make
doing business easier. In real terms this means consigning women to
poorly paid, often risky employment conditions, with no union
protection to produce profits that will be repatriated overseas. Your
constant use of the "two economies" partition reflects the need by
the state to accommodate both the demands of business for a non-
interventionist state with the explicit requirement for state led
intervention to tackle the burgeoning needs of the economically
excluded.

Women are explicitly mentioned only once during the State of the
Nation Address and that is in the context of indigent women. In
mentioning this particular group of women, you have not in any way
suggested any mechanism of enabling them to participate significantly
in the economy and make the quantum leap from the so-called second to
the first economy. If government persists in its own propaganda,
enabling this dualism will certainly cause deepening poverty and
destitution as the 'first' economy continually ejects those
superfluous to its requirements. Moreover objectifying our poverty
serves no function other than to further dehumanise women.

Much has been said in this speech about strengthening SMEs. In so
doing it is important to address the supply side constraints, the
financial environment particularly to access to credit, small
business mentoring, child care, skills development and the many other
factors which inhibit women's ability to fully benefit from the
opportunities available. Fluctuations in capital flows and cyclical
instability disadvantage women more than men. There is a strong case
for re-regulation of capital of international capital flows,
especially portfolio flows. This is because they are 'gendered'
institutions and structures. That is, they are institutions created,
dominated and controlled by men. Institutions like DTI are therefore
being shaped by a particular gender and class of people. They are
expressions and vehicles of the preferred vision aspirations and
assumptions of this particular group in South Africa. This occasion
would be an opportunity to articulate the aspirations of citizens
across gender, income and class lines.

The speech thus ignores the question of gender issues in economic
development. It is not simply one of economic or social problems. It
involves social relations of gender and the problems of
deconstructing the ideology of gender relations, which includes a
redistribution of power. Access to basic services are lauded as
meeting Millennium Development Goals. The President states that
access to water follows a rights approach in this country. Mr. Mbeki
you fail to mention that millions of the most vulnerable people in
this country -most of whom are women - still have to contend with
water and electricity cut-offs, many of which are not legal. The
rights based paradigm would not force the most economically
vulnerable to pay for services that they cannot afford. The rights
based paradigm would ensure that water, sanitation and electricity
were readily available by subsidising the most impoverished
households and charging the 'haves' greater amounts. This is the
difference between poverty alleviation and poverty eradication.
Poverty eradication requires a radical and consistent re-alignment
and redistribution of resources across sectors and a complete shift
in thinking. If we are to see the evidence of Ubuntu, this requires
considering and rescinding the negative consequences of state policy
on the most vulnerable particularly women. It is not comfortable and
it requires more profound and accelerated impetus than government has
hitherto shown. Is this a shift that you and the government are
willing to make?

The speech speaks vociferously about increasing the personnel numbers
and capacity in the criminal justice machinery, mentions violent
crime in passing and highlights poaching, cash in transit heists and
animal trafficking. More puzzling is the omission of rape and gender
based violence. Given the ongoing reports of these crimes, this is
reprehensible. In a country with the highest incidence of rape in the
world it is a shameful lapse. We recognise the sterling efforts of
many police, judges, prosecutors, district surgeons and other public
servants. However no mention is made of the collusion of some
criminal justice personnel in allowing certain dockets to go
'missing', the trauma that many women and children face when they
give evidence, the non-responsiveness and insensitivity of police in
dealing with domestic violence. Equally worrying is that the speech
mentions nothing abut the trafficking of women and children in and
out of South Africa yet this is a global crisis. Considering all
this, should we conclude that poaching is a higher priority than rape
or human trafficking or domestic violence?

Social welfarism is a laudable component of State policy,
particularly when there are such deep schisms and social
inequalities. However it is disingenuous to present a speech full of
promises as though the status quo is a result of forces other than
Government policy of the last 13 years. GEAR (Growth, Employment and
Redistribution economic strategy) and now ASGISA (Accelerated and
Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa) are objects of
contestation not only because their origins are not clear but because
they do not offer a clear social contract with the nation. Despite
the fact that the GEAR failed to meet its targets on most of its
goals, including increased levels of local and foreign investment and
employment creation, government for its part continues to hail the
success of GEAR based on the attainment of two narrow indicators
which are the reduction of the budget deficit, and the reduction in
inflation. ASGISA has so far failed to address these contradictions
and has so far kept women invisible from the policy constructs and
processes. Moreover you have not told the nation that many of the
500,000 new jobs that have been created are short term or temporary
and that these figures include self employed people in the informal
sector. And most critically for African women, you have not told us
how many of these jobs are for women who comprise the biggest group
of unemployed people.

In defining a common national identity it is critical to be cognisant
of the totality of the nation. The character of the Nation State, Mr.
President, is linked to the manner in which the state relates to all
in those within Her borders. It is connected to the nationhood that
enables, that protects and that nurtures. As citizens we must
challenge the role of the state as protector, provider, enabler and
defender especially when this role is all but vacated. We must as
women interrogate the nationhood that ignores us or replicates all
that is reactionary, patriarchal, gender blind and hostile to our
development in the name of 'growth' , of 'investment' or hidden under
a gender desk. The greatest irony is that the resumption of the Doha
Round of the WTO negotiations reduces the role and notion of the
State to a moot point and rescinds any progressive domestic policy
cutting across access to and provision of services, agriculture,
investment policy, intellectual property rights and non agricultural
market access.

This multilateralism promotes a supra state accountable to none and
yet keeping all in its grip. Added to this is the threat of the
Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) which many of our neighbours
are being bludgeoned into by the European Union with indecent haste
and almost sinister opaqueness. There are inevitable consequences on
South Africa through dumping and trade diversion. In all this, Mr.
President, we urge you to remember that in order to remove 'the
stench of living ' nationhood must restore our dignity, must enforce
an authentic pro Africa agenda, must promote intra Africa trade which
does not replicate colonial relationships. Nationhood in this era
requires courageous leadership, Mr. President, which enables social
cohesion without threats to dissenters, which makes us all feel safe
physically, economically, socially and financially without selling
our interests to foreign capital and which can relate to the mighty
women in this country as more than vote fodder.

* For more information contact GENTA on: Liepollo Lebohang Pheko [084
881 9327] or Mohau Nthisana Pheko [082 670 2505]

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

clp)clp)clp)

however i would say it is a poverty issue, which effects all genders.....mind you whenever you find feminism, you find socialisim, it goes hand in hand with poverty driven policies.

.lol. Posted this with you in mind.