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SA: Lulu Xingwana: Address by the Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Nangoza Jebe Hall, New Brighton, Nelson Mandela Metro, Eastern Cape (03/12/2013)

SA: Lulu Xingwana: Address by the Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Nangoza Jebe Hall, New Brighton, Nelson Mandela Metro, Eastern Cape (03/12/2013)

3rd December 2013

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Today’s celebrations constitute the first official National Day of Persons with Disabilities in South Africa.  It also brings to a close the first official National Disability Rights Awareness Month in South Africa.

This follows a Cabinet decision in November 2013 to include the National Disability Rights Month, from November 3 to December 3, and the National Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, on the official events calendar of South Africa.

Allow me therefore to express our sincerest appreciation for the manner in which the Eastern Cape Provincial Government responded to our Ministry’s call earlier this year to co-host the 2013 National Day of Persons with Disabilities.

I am told that November 2013 in the Eastern Cape Province has been a month in which the achievements and victories of persons with disabilities, together with their aspirations, have been celebrated and placed on the provincial agenda from the east to the west to the north of the province.

National Disability Rights Awareness Month calls on all of us – white, black, men and women, children, young people and our older persons, parents, teachers, employers, public servants, service providers, journalists, researchers, religious leaders, traditional leaders, public representatives, organisations of and for persons with disabilities, and ordinary citizens – to reflect on the role we have played over the past year in creating a better life for persons with disabilities as equal citizens.

The theme for 2013 - “The Right to Universal Access and Design: Break Barriers, Open Doors to realise an Inclusive Society for All - Action through Partnership” – is indeed a call to action.

The National Development Plan: Vision 2030, provides us with the map for the next 16 years.  The lessons learnt from both the successes and failures of the past 19 years of democracy should inform our priorities to build a truly non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa free from discrimination.

Our experiences over the past 19 years of democracy have taught us that the right to self-representation holds the key to breaking barriers and opening doors to the creation of a participatory democratic society.

The right to self-representation starts with being able to take decisions that affect one’s standard of living – where you go to school, where you live, with whom you live, who you form relationships with, where you work and what work you do – often an unknown concept for many persons with disabilities.

The principle of self-representation is therefore paramount in ensuring an adequate standard of living, and therefore goes hand in hand with empowerment, participation and independent living.

Access to a barrier-free environment, access to quality education and access to decent work and/or self-employment form three of the key pillars for the liberation of persons with disabilities, and give concrete expression to their right to dignity.

Programme Director,

Whilst we acknowledge that progress has been steady but slow in turning our education system around over the past 19 years, we also need to celebrate that progress has been made.

Children with disabilities were by-and-large not welcome in ordinary schools prior to 1994.  If a school principal decided he did not want a child with a disability in his or her school, the parent just had to accept this.  The only option was to send the child off to a special school far away from home.  Very few children with disabilities got into these special schools, so they remained uneducated.  It was simply not compulsory for children with disabilities to attend school, unless they were white.

Today, all children between the ages of 7 and 15 have to attend school by law.  This includes children with disabilities.  Our education policies make it clear that children with disabilities should be accommodated in the local schools, and that they need to be provided with the support they need to learn.

If a school principal refuses a child with a disability access to a school, the parent can appeal to the MEC for Education and if this still does not help, to the South African Human Rights Commission and even the Equality Courts.

As a result, we know that by 2010, approximately 94% of children with disabilities aged 7-15 years were enrolled in school, compared with 73% in 2002.   This does not mean that there are not still major challenges in improving both access to education, as well as the quality of education learners with disabilities receive, but we are well on the road to realising the right to education for ALL our children, including children with disabilities.

Our focus as both government and communities should now shift to improving access for children with disabilities and quality of education in our local community schools, and no longer sending our disabled children to far away special schools where they are often not safe and where the quality of education often leaves much to be desired.

This also means that we need to ensure that children with disabilities have access to safe, inclusive early childhood development programmes in the communities where they live so that they are school-ready by the age of 6.

Similarly, the doors of education and opportunity are also opening for young people with disabilities.

The Baseline Country Report to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities tells us that 54% of the 9,541 young people with disabilities who enrolled in learnership programmes between 2008 and 2011 successfully completed their learnerships, with almost of them gaining employment after the completion of their learnerships.

A total of 6,277 young people with disabilities who were studying at universities in 2012 declared their disabilities. The NSFAS grant now provides reasonable accommodation support to qualifying students with assistive devices and technology, as well as personal assistance to remove barriers to learning.

Creating decent work for persons with disabilities remains a national priority, and much work is being done on finding solutions for the gaps between intention, policy and practice.

Allow me therefore, Programme Director, to commend the Eastern Cape Provincial Government for the practical and decisive steps taken in partnering with organisations such as the Eastern Cape Disability Economic Empowerment Trust to put measures in place that will bridge the gap between prospective employers and job-seekers with disabilities.  The partnership between the Eastern Cape Provincial Government, the Eastern Cape Disability Economic Empowerment Trust, Disabled People South Africa and the National Youth Development Agency to conceive the Disability Job Creation Initiative & Driver Training Programme, recently launched, is a step in the right direction.

The National Disability Rights Policy, due to be finalised before we converge for the 2014 National Day of Persons with Disabilities, will, among others, put in place measures that will address external factors preventing job-seekers with disabilities from accessing gainful employment.  These measures should also contribute to reducing the high incidence of under-employment of persons with disabilities in both the public and private sector.

Finalisation of the National Disability Rights Policy is the first step towards domestication of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and will be followed by the passing of National Disability Rights Legislation and strengthening of sector-based legislation to remove discrimination and strengthen universal design access in all policies, programmes, services and budgets.  The National Disability Rights Policy will therefore include a national Monitoring and Evaluation system to track progress in realisation the rights of persons with disabilities.  The Policy will also provide guidelines to strengthen the advocacy and monitoring capacity of disabled peoples’ organisations, and will guide on the designation of the independent monitoring mechanism provided for in Article 33 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The establishment of the National Braille Authority and the recognition of South African Sign Language as an official language will furthermore contribute to accelerating the pace of achieving equality of outcomes for persons with disabilities.

The Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill, currently before Parliament, acknowledge the compounded discrimination women with disabilities experience, and provides specifically for their empowerment and protection.  We call on all disability structures – and women with disabilities in particular – to actively participate in the consultative processes on the Bill that will unfold through the National Council of Provinces and provincial Legislatures in the coming months.

Programme Director,

It is important that we acknowledge that there are sectors within the disability sector which are more vulnerable and susceptible to violation of their human rights.

We are gathered today a week after the launch of the 16 Days of Activism for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Children Campaign.   This is an annual awareness campaign observed globally to reaffirm our collective commitment to create a society that is safe and secure for women and children, including women and children with disabilities.

2013 marks the 14th anniversary of the national campaign which began in 1999. The 2013 South African theme is “Vikela Mzansi - Kwanele! Communities united in preventing violence against women and children.”  

HIV and AIDS is the most serious threat to South Africa's social, economic and human development. Gender-based violence perpetuates the rapid rise and increase in HIV infections.   The Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities has over the past year raised awareness of HIV as a cause of impairments such as loss of hearing and loss of eyesight, as well as the particular challenges persons with disabilities experience in accessing HIV and AIDS-related services.

The high incidence of sexual abuse of girl-children and boys with disabilities – and in particular with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities – is an insult to our humanity as a nation.  The sterling work being done by organisations such as the Cape Mental Health, Afrika Tikkun, the Universities of the Western Cape and Witwatersrand respectively, to name but a few, requires not only our appreciation, but support, and I call on all our law enforcement agencies to learn from these institutions to prosecute perpetrators and remove them from society.

Government is currently putting in place measures to ensure that men who abuse women and girls with disabilities who cannot speak, or see, or remember, are still prosecuted and locked away.  We will find them, we will charge them, and we will lock them away.

The Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities is calling on all South Africans – and in particular on those in positions of decision-making – to join hands with the Department in affirming the rights of children and adults with disabilities, wherever we work, play, educate, employ or serve.

Let us use DisabilityRights Awareness Month 2013 to take personal as well as collective responsibility for our actions – or lack thereof - in breaking barriers and opening doors for children and adults with disabilities.

·         Let us say NO to discrimination in public and private transport!

·         Let us give a voice to Deaf South Africans by recognising Sign Language as their official language!

·         Let us open the doors to literacy through braille for blind South Africans!

·         Let us declare war on name-calling and hate speech towards persons with disabilities!

As we prepare for 2014,

·         Let us invite and encourage children with disabilities to enrol with their able-bodied brothers and sisters in their local schools;

·         Let us commit as employers to diversify our work force and to create decent work opportunities for job-seekers with disabilities;

·         Let us take personal and collective responsibility to work as a nation to create a society free from discrimination … South Africa can only be free if ALL South Africans are free!

I thank you.

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