Black women are the most disadvantaged section of South African society, oppressed because of their social class, gender and colour; they are also the greatest victims of violence. Women have the most to gain from a democratic post-apartheid South Africa. Earlier this year in Johannesburg Green Left Weekly's FRANK NOAKES spoke with the African National Congress Women's League secretary general, BALEKA KGOSITSILE and national organiser NOSIVIWE MAPISA about the league's work.
In February, the South African Broadcasting Commission quoted a report asserting that 1000 women and girls are raped every day in South Africa. In the same month a study by Wits University Centre for Health Policy disclosed that 60% of married women are beaten by their husbands, with one in six regularly so assaulted. Many are murdered. South Africa has the highest rates of both murder and rape of any country.
To Baleka Kgositsile, these statistics reflect a sickness in South African society born of apartheid, a violent system that has brutalised and dehumanised so many. "We are an extremely traumatised people and this trauma manifests itself in many different ways. One of the things that does, unfortunately, happen is rape and other forms of physical violence against women and young girls."
That apartheid is still alive, well and particularly violent to women is illustrated by an article in the February 23 Sowetan. The township paper reported that a gang of white youths stoned a black woman and her 11 month old child; the little girl suffered brain damage and was in a coma fighting for her life. Although an "attempted murder docket" was opened against the youths, who were known to the police, a police spokesperson said that the assailants could not be arrested because "they are sitting for their exams. There is no use rushing the case ..." This is a fairly typical response to attacks on black women.
Of course domestic violence and abuse of women by men are not limited to the black community, as Kgositsile notes. In fact, white women don't often realise that
they suffer many of same problems as black women, she says.
Women's issues must not wait for the new government to be in place for them to be addressed, says Kgositsile. "This is why we are insisting that CODESA [Convention for a Democratic South Africa, the multiparty negotiations forum], must have a way of ensuring that these issues are taken on board."
Women must also be part of the democratic process, adds Kgositsile: "If you have in a particular setting people perhaps deciding on meeting venues and times that don't take into consideration the specific realities of women then, in fact, you are impinging on their freedom to be involved in the political process".
South African women, no strangers to struggle, even had to fight to take their rightful place in the liberation movement. It was not until 1943 that women, who make up 52% of the population and 36% of the work force, were admitted as ANC members. The ANCWL was established shortly afterwards.
Writing in the ANC Women's League magazine, The Rock, South African Communist Party and ANC leader Raymond Suttner said: "The struggle for non-sexism within the ANC has travelled a long way. When the ANC was formed, through exclusion from membership, women were not even considered as part of the 'nation' that was envisaged. The struggle of the 1950s and subsequent work has enshrined non-sexism as a basic principle of the ANC and in our vision of a future South Africa."
Now the ANC's main political slogan demands a "democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa".
African women have always seen women's liberation as inseparably linked to that of national liberation. The ANC agrees. In 1990, the ANC National Executive Committee adopted a policy on women that read in part, "... the emancipation of women is not a by-product of a struggle for democracy, national liberation or socialism. It has to be addressed in its own right within our organisation, the mass democratic movement and in society as a whole."
However, as Suttner explained, "No statement of policy can guarantee the implementation of the principles of non-sexism; the closest we can come to guarantee is to place power behind our demands". He is talking here of women mobilising and raising their demands.
Kgositsile says that problems remain within the ANC, with some men yet to come to terms with old habits. Women, who are "a large proportion" of the membership and in a majority in some border regions, remain seriously under-represented in the leadership of the organisation.
The ANCWL is demanding that when the Transitional Executive Committee, which will be looking at "levelling the playing field" for the April 27 elections, is formed, and beyond that the Constituent Assembly, there must be a specific structure that is always looking and ensuring that issues of women are not neglected.
Details have not yet been worked out, says Kgositsile, but women are holding workshops to decide what programs they want to propose to the incoming democratic government, so it will have proposals, formulated by women themselves, ready to act upon.
The ANCWL believes that ensuring that women's issues are promoted can't be a partisan project. It therefore initiated meetings that led to the formation of what is now called the National Women's Coalition. There are currently some 80 women's political, community and union groups involved in the coalition.
In September 1991 a campaign for a Charter of Women's Rights, which has been a good educational tool, was launched; it will inform the proposed Bill of Rights, and the new constitution.
An electoral list of 400 candidates to contest the 1994 elections will be drawn up by the ANC. This list will be composed of people from the tripartite alliance of the ANC, the SACP and the Congress Of South African Trade Unions. Women play active roles in all three organisations.
The ANCWL, which views the elections as its major focus, has decided not to come up with a separate list
since it is an integral part of the ANC. But it will draw up a list which will "have both men and women as a proposal to the ANC. We should arrange the list in blocks of 50 and make a conscious effort to cater for all sorts of interests, or interest groups, and gender is definitely a major one."
With the ANC expected to win around 70% of the 400 seats, Kgositsile points out, "We don't want all the women in the last 50 of the 400."
National organiser Nosiviwe Mapisa sounds a note of caution, saying, "We believe that women are not going to vote for the ANC if the ANC does not commit itself and say: 'These are the issues we are committed to; this is what we are going to deliver to the women'. If the ANC can't do that, then the ANC can't expect to get a big vote from the women."
It is the role of the ANCWL to take the demands of women into the ANC and say, "These are the issues that must appear in the ANC election manifesto", Mapisa says. The main issues of particular concern to women that the ANCWL have identified so far are housing, free education, jobs and general poverty.
The task the ANCWL has set itself is to train women leaders and organisers, to go out into the countryside to participate in voter education. Many women in the countryside don't know what the ANC stands for, Mapisa insists, and these women will be targeted by Inkatha and even the National Party.
"In the past we urged people not to vote in the bantustan [black "homelands"] elections because we said 'You are not voting for your own government, but an apartheid government'. Now we have to go back to the same women and say, 'Vote because you'll be voting for a democratic government'.
"People may say women need to go and vote, but if they don't know how to put an 'X' it's going to be a problem." Mapisa warns that the ANC and men generally might not see the necessity of teaching women how to vote. There will have to be a door to door education campaign, she says.
Unless the ANCWL succeeds in its education campaign, many women are going to be disenfranchised in South
Africa's first democratic elections. To complete the task, it will need its own election funds. "We are going to collect ANC funds, but we need to have our own funding that goes directly to the Women's League which we can have access to", explains Mapisa.
Extra funds will also allow African women to travel abroad to link up with other women's groups. The ANCWL is also appealing for women from other countries to visit and share their experiences with the women of South Africa.
The ANCWL can be contacted at PO Box 61884, Marshalltown 2307, Johannesburg. Cheques should be made payable to the ANC Women's League.