Issued by: Government Communication and Information System
ADDRESS BY JOYCE SEROKE, CHAIRPERSON OF THE COMMISSION ON GENDER EQUALITY, AT THE PUBLIC LAUNCH OF THE CGE ANNUAL REPORT
It is a great honour for me, just over one month into my new job as the Chair of the Commission on Gender Equality, to publicly launch the annual report of the Commission. May I begin by paying tribute to my Deputy Chair, Phumelele Ntombela-Nzimande, who was Acing Chair during the period, which this report covers; to my fellow Commissioners; to the CEO and staff of the Commission for the sterling work they have done.
A day like this is a day of celebration. It is also a day to remember, as I say in the foreword to the report, that the long walk is not yet over.
The report reflects the excitement and energy that we sense around us as we advance towards the achievement of gender equality. We are proud:
Yet, as a Commission, we join our sister constitutional Commissions by expressing concern that our independence is not always respected. An example of this is the way in which the budgets of independent bodies are allocated. Last year, we recommended that the budget of the Commission be directly allocated by parliament, rather than through the Department of Justice. This year we expressed alarm at the reference in the memorandum attached to the Treasury Bill that the accounting officers of Commissions report to the heads of the departments through which their budgets are allocated; a move we view as having the effect of weakening the independence of Commissions. We urge the government to respect the independence of Commissions through, among other measures, making them directly accountable to parliament for their work and their budgets. We further urge the Speaker to designate a specific committee/s to which Commissions would account.
In my foreword to the report, I remark or the way in which gender issues continue to be sidelined by government. The CGE is no exception. While resignations from other Chapter Nine bodies are addressed expefediously, it took a full year for the Chair of the CGE and was commissioners to be replaced. That may appear to be an oversight. It is not. It speaks volumes of the way in which we talk the talk of gender equality, without walking the walk.
Paper guarantees: The underlying theme of this report is that while we have come a long way in recognising and codifying what needs to be done, we must still make it happen in practice. The CGE's audit of remaining discriminatory legislation, points to remaining glaring discriminatory practices. The report also highlights the hidden discrimination, which often requires us to go beyond legislative measures to ensure that equality actually occurs. For example, it is one thing to give men and women equal rights to access to land; and quite another to ensure equality in land tenure.
The challenge to the CGE is thus to exercise for more rigorously its constitutional mandate not just of reviewing legislation and making recommendations; but of monitoring and evaluating policies and practices; investigating and exposing the structural barriers to the achievement of substantive equality; lobbying and ensuring that these are redressed. The Equality Legislation required by the Constitution, and currently being drafted, will be an important legal tool for realising gender equality. The CGE will work closely with government departments, independent institutions, and parliament, in ensuring the strongest possible gender provisions in this legislation. It will also place a strong emphasis on legal education, to try and bridge the chasm between the existence and exercise of of rights to gender equality. The CGE will be issuing an annual report card on governments performance towards the achievement of gender equality.
Getting the private sector on board: The purview of the CGE extends to all society. With the launch of major research projects on Gender and the Private Sector; Gender and Advertising; Equal Pay for Equal Work and Work of Equal Value as well as the gender audit of the Maputo Corridor the CGE ushers in this year an important new focus on the private sector. The combination of carrot and stick which will be required to break into his relatively new area of work will pose a major challenge to the Commission, as well as to its new partners in this field. We hope that the private sector will recognise that gender equality is a benefit, rather than a cost to society.
Cost and Benefits of gender equality: We argue in the report that gender structures - to the extend that they exist - are under funded. The under resourcing of the Office on the Status of Women in the Deputy President's Office is a particular case in point. We further argue that specific budgetary allocations are crucial to giving effect to the progressive new legislation that has been passed.
For example, the Maintenance and Domestic Violence Acts will remain just so many words unless the requisite infrastructure and human resources are provided by the Department of Justice to make these effective. The CGE will be monitoring and commenting on such budget allocations in the context of the government's overall budget prioritisation and allocations.
Partnerships and synergies: Mindful offiscal constraints, as well as the importance of acting as a catalyst rather than trying to be an implementing agency, the CGE has sought to build a network of partnerships referred to throughout this report. The CGE has forged particularly close links with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and Public Protector. The SAHRC and CGE are sharing offices in the three provinces where they both have operations.
Do we need a Commission on Gender Equality? The CGE is still subject to regular criticism in certain quarters that it and other Commissions, are a waste of taxpayers money. We have sought to respond to this argument in deeds rather than in words by getting on with our work; avoiding a culture of ostentation and engaging in vigorous fund raising. When the Office of the Public Service and Administration recommended that the CGE's staff complement be increased from 42 to 78 over three years, the CGE argued that this increase should be staggered over five years. We are strongly of the view that the benefits of having a Commission whose sole focus is to ensure the attainment of one of the fundamental cornerstones of our Constitution far outweight its relatively modest costs.
Strategic direction: In this vein, we shall continue to work tirelessly for the achievement of gender equality with what resources we have, and in the most cost effective way we can, in the year ahead. Indeed, at our strategic planning workshop in mid-March, we emerged with a keener sense of the need to be more focused; to follow through on the work we have initiated; to make greater use of our Constitutional powers and to be even more resolute in the enormous challenges we confront.
For more information please call Kubeshni Govender on 083 273 8428, or (011) 403 7182