Comment & analysis
A Feminist critique of President Mbeki
Gender & Trade Network in Africa
2007-02-14, Issue 291
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/39753
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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 www.pambazuka.org
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