STATEMENT BY DEPUTY PRESIDENT ZUMA TO THE GALA DINNER IN HONOUR OF WOMEN VETERANS

8 August 1999

CAPE TOWN

Mayor of Cape Town, Ms. Mfeketo
Women Veterans of the Struggle
Comrades and Compatriots
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Indeed it is an honour for me to be with you here today as we celebrate National Women's Day and to share my thoughts with you.

This day is of great importance for all of us who have participated in the long struggle for national liberation, for it confirms that the women of our land - grandmothers, aunts, mothers, daughters - have been active participants in the struggle for freedom and that for decades, they have been at the leadership of the movement for change. These are the women who already in the 1950s declared to the menfolk with fearlessness and determination: we have opened the road for you.

This day is also of importance to us, since it represents the link between past and present generations, between those women - who played pivotal roles in our struggle for freedom: the Lilian Ngoyis, the Helen Josephs, the Dorothy Nyembes, the Florence Mkhizes, between those twenty thousand women - who first took the long walk to the Union Buildings as they protested against the introduction of pass laws for women and the new generation of women in our country today who call for gender equality, speedy delivery of services, opportunities to progress in education, proper housing, adequate health care and an end to the terrors of rape and abuse that plague our society at present.

Thus, I believe, that today is not only important for what it can tell us about how far we have come on the road to gender equality, but it is also a time when grandmothers and mothers and children should meet and sit together and exchange ideas based on their past experiences and present realities.

The wisdom of the women of the past must be coupled with the vigour and vitality of the women of the present in order for us to effect real and meaningful change in our country.

National Women's Day should be a unifying day for all the people of South Africa, a day on which we should stand together as a united nation and speak peacably about what we have done, what our achievements are, and what remains to be changed.

Alice Walker, the influential writer, champion of the downtrodden, who has shaped the thinking of women and men worldwide, in her well-known essay, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens writes the following:

"My mother adorned with flowers whatever shabby house we were forced to live in. And not just your typical straggly country stand of zinnias, either. She planted ambitious gardens - and still does - with over fifty

different varieties of plants that bloom profusely
• Before she left home for the fields, she watered her flowers, chopped up the grass, and laid out new beds. When she returned from the fields she might divide clumps of bulb, dig a cold pit, uproot and replant roses, or prune branches from her taller bushes or trees - until night came and it was too dark to see. Whatever she planted grew as if by magic, and her fame as a grower of flowers spread over three counties. Because of her creativity with her flowers, even my memories of poverty are seen through a screen of blooms - sunflowers, petunias, roses, dahlias - and on and on. And I remember people coming to my mother's yard to be given cuttings from her flowers; I hear again the praise showered on her because whatever rocky soil she landed on, she turned into a garden. A garden so brilliant with colours, so original in its design, so magnificent with life and creativity. I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible - except as Creator: hand and eye. She is involved in work her soul must have. Ordering the universe in the image of her personal conception of Beauty. Her face, as she prepares the Art that is her gift, is a legacy of respect she leaves to me, for all that illuminates and cherishes life. She has handed down respect for the possibilities - and the will to grasp them. Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength - in search of my mother's garden, I found my own."

While Alice Walker was examining the situation of black women in America in her essay, her words are relevant to our situation.

For as we pay tribute to the women veterans in our land, we are paying tribute to our mothers. For many of us have known or have been brought up by women like the mother described by Walker.

Indeed, some of you here today are or surely will become the innovative woman described by Walker.

Many of us are the daughters and sons of such extraordinary women, women born in poverty, but remaining bold and innovative, never submitting, women who made the most out of their lives, doing extraordinary things to better the lives of their families, their villages, their towns, and the whole country.

These were women who handed down respect to the next generation, who gave us the willpower to succeed, so that we too - each one of us - could find and create our own gardens, which together can make the whole country bloom and the continent flower.

I believe that all of you here today - like Walker's woman - are "involved in work your soul must have" and, in the process of performing this work, you have the power to order "the universe in the image" of your "conception of Beauty."

You are women who have put processes into motion, who are among the leading contributors to South African political life, women with enormous skills who have given their hearts and minds to develop all the people of our land, women whose influences extend all over the country.

I believe that in the last five years, it has been because of women like you, that new and progressive policies and legislation that defend and protect women's rights have come into being.

Since 1994, pregnant women and children to the age of five have been given access to free health care. I am also thinking of the Employment Equity Act, the Domestic Violence Act, the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act and the Maintenance Act, among others.

The challenge to all of us today is how to popularise these laws and make women aware of their rights in terms of the constitution. The challenge is also how to ensure the proper implementation of these laws and that our judicial system is treating women fairly.

Huge strides have been taken in making a non-sexist society a reality by empowering women through enshrinement of equality in the constitution and through the establishment of the Commission on Gender Equality.

The Office on the Status of Women (OSW), located in the Presidency, was established to ensure that constitutional imperatives underpinning gender equality are translated into meaningful government programmes at the highest possible levels.

This office seeks to provide guidance on national gender policy and to give direction on implementation. It has developed the framework to undertake the national gender audit, helped to develop the National Action Plan on Human Rights and played a co-ordinating role in the 'Women's Partnership Against HIV/AIDS Campaign.'

The National Gender Policy Document - which will become a white paper on gender equality - has adopted a basic needs approach, basing itself on the assumption that the majority of women in this country are impoverished and that programmes are needed for the alleviation of poverty which are also aimed at fundamental transformation of gender relations.

The challenge to all of us in government, the private sector and in NGOs is how to ensure the development of these poor areas and the building of necessary infrastructure such as roads and clinics that will make the lives of these women easier, so that they too can enter the next century as confident, healthy, educated women, who will shape our new country and our children's future.

While we have come a long way in the last five years in putting in place a legislative framework to overcome the legacy of the past, we are still facing a serious situation whereby most of the women in our country still live in poverty, and that these women are the ones most vulnerable to abuse, violence and disease.

I believe that the time has also come for the silence to be broken with regard to the abuse of women and children. Crimes against women and children will only cease to happen, once communities begin to speak about what is happening in their areas, and once partnerships based on trust can be forged between the people of these communities, the government also at local levels and the police, for the key to stopping such abuse is the adoption of an integrated approach to crime. By this I mean that it is only through the co-operation between various sectors, that we can make our areas safe environments in which to live.

The challenge to all of us here today is how to instil in our sons and daughters a value system that will ensure that they will not become the perpetrators of violence, but the bringers and nurturers of peace, harmony and prosperity for the people of this land.

In conclusion, let me quote another great woman writer, Maya Angelou, who says that it is required that: "Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives. The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory."

I believe that all the women present here today are warriors and together you are a power to be reckoned with.

Let us work together to develop our country, especially through the empowerment of the women of this country, so that we can truly begin to view every day of our lives as a celebration.

I thank you.