Gender equality: thin edge against despotic wedge

THE manner in which cultural rights are being defined and traditional institutions valorised has brought them into serious conflict with women’s rights.

The promotion of women’s rights is generally described as the struggle for gender equality.

Recognition for what is referred to, often interchangeably, as traditional, indigenous or, more pointedly, African culture, is commonly represented as a struggle for cultural rights.

The particular way in which the latter has come to be defined, the valorisation of traditional institutions that have historically excluded or marginalised women, has brought it into serious conflict with the former.

Tensions between women’s rights and cultural rights are, of course, not unique to South Africa. They have, however, acquired a particular salience in this country in the post-apartheid dispensation.

The manner in which the contestation between women’s rights and cultural rights has unfolded since 1994 places gender at the centre of the ongoing debate about the meaning of equality and democracy.

One of my concerns is to trace the way in which a “turn to tradition” within the ANC has threatened the gains made by the broad women’s movement in 1993, when gender equality was confirmed as a foundational constitutional commitment of South Africa’s new democracy.

That commitment would not have been possible without the acceptance by the ANC of the principle of gender equality as a core organisational value; yet, as subsequent developments have revealed, respect for women’s rights is not a deeply rooted practical virtue within the organisation.

There is a deep-seated conservatism around gender relations among many members (male and female), which from time to time has burst dramatically into the public arena, as in the political theatre that erupted in the course of the rape trial and subsequent acquittal of Jacob Zuma in 2006 when he was fighting for his political life.

Popular mobilisation against the claims of traditionalists has played a critical role in defending not only the insecure achievements of the broad women’s movement, but also general principles of non-racialism and democracy.

These dynamics can be seen particularly clearly in the vocal opposition within civil society to the ANC’s concerted efforts since the early 2000s to consolidate the powers of unelected traditional leadership institutions from former Bantustan districts: in local government, land ownership and administration, and the administration of justice.

In the campaigns that sections of civil society have fought against the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (2003), the Communal Land Rights Act (2004) and, most recently, the Traditional Courts Bill (2008 and 2012), the constitutional commitment to gender equality has been a particularly difficult impediment for the state to circumvent, both legally and politically.

Thus, far from the struggle for women’s rights seeking to advance sectarian goals at the expense of the greater good (which is how feminism was often construed within the national liberation movement before the 1990s), women’s rights have become central to the broader struggle for equality and full citizenship.

The ANC’s unfolding policy on traditional institutions reflects the dominance of very thin understandings of both gender equality and cultural rights within the organisation.

Although space does not allow a full development of this point, in part it can be explained historically. In terms of its organisational culture, the ANC continues to be held hostage to its past as a nationalist movement, strongly influenced by Marxist-Leninism and long suspicious of feminism, individualism and Western liberalism.

Its preferred sociology constructs South Africa as an uneasy agglomeration of distinct social groups that are defined primarily in terms of common-sense constructions of race.

Philosophically and politically, the collective is valued above the individual, as seen in the much-vaunted punting of the notion of ubuntu (humaneness), which lends itself to certain understandings of the past as a golden age in which harmony and social cohesion prevailed.

But more instrumentalist political considerations are also at work. Hein Marais, for instance, has attributed the ANC’s turn to traditional leadership institutions after 2000 to a mounting concern to “extend and strengthen its authority” in rural areas, at a time when the government’s failures to deliver on promises of socio-economic transformation have become increasingly difficult to manage.

The ANC’s commitment to gender equality has been most consistently expressed through its construction of women as a marginalised social group that can best be served through setting quotas and targets for female participation in institutions, as well as by establishing special bodies to advance their interests, such as the Commission on Gender Equality.

Another example was President Jacob  Zuma’s 2009 decision to establish a ragbag Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities within his cabinet, thereby constructing women as a special-interest constituency within a clumsily conceived association of vulnerable groups.

Yet, ordinary women’s struggles for rights and recognition cannot be reduced to a problem of inadequate representation within government and corporate structures. Their challenges are rather more commonly located in everyday relationships with intimate partners, other family and community members, and employers. Here women’s concerns about individual bodily integrity and authority over income and property are paramount, not the gender balance in organisations.

The report card on the status of women since 1994 is not, however, all negative.

In keeping with the ANC’s commitment to quotas and targets to boost the representation of women, there have been impressive gains in women’s participation in public life. By 2009, 44% of parliamentarians were women, up from 25% in 1994.

A series of laws designed to improve women’s standing have been placed on the statute book, although enforcement remains a serious problem. Examples include broadly progressive legislation on abortion (1996), domestic violence (1998) and customary marriage (1998).

The substantial expansion of a national programme of social grants since 1994, notably the child support grant that goes to the caregivers of poor children, is also credited both with making a noticeable dent in absolute poverty and with giving women (who are, overwhelmingly, the caregivers) greater authority in domestic decision-making around finances.

Women’s rights to inherit property, notably houses, have been legally promoted by various court decisions, while on the ground increasing numbers of single women are negotiating access to communal land within their communities, albeit with considerable regional variations.

While there has been mounting criticism of the poor performance of the Commission for Gender Equality, there is an active network of non-governmental organisations and other civil society bodies working on the issues of women’s rights and gender issues more broadly.

Mobilisation around particular issues can be vigorous, as was seen during the parliamentary hearings on the Traditional Courts Bill in 2012 and 2013. Men are increasingly visible in many of these campaigns.

There is, however, also worrying evidence of a backlash on the part of many men, angered by what they see as the usurpation of their formerly unquestioned domestic authority; this could go some way to accounting for the disturbingly high levels of gender-based violence.

In this context of major insecurity around the gender order, and the moral health of society more generally, the political leadership of the ANC is important to give content to the meaning of gender equality in daily life.

This is not only because of its electoral dominance, but because as a broad church party of liberation it is influential across different social spheres (labour, religious, educational, and so on) and still resonant with political and moral authority for many South Africans.

Its gender-specific policies obviously carry some weight, as do its public pronouncements on pressing social issues, such as gender-based violence and the manner in which it integrates gender awareness into general government programmes, including rural local government and land reform.

Given the respectability that is now firmly attached to the ANC’s formal endorsement of women’s empowerment as a fundamental value in the post-apartheid era, the organisation has found it difficult to ignore criticisms of its policies couched in the language of gender equality.

As a result of the mobilisation of women’s organisations, the constitutional negotiations of the mid-1990s produced an outcome in which the right to gender equality was elevated above the right to practise one’s culture. Although the realisation of these ideals has proved difficult to engineer, a significant reconfiguration of gender relations in the direction of greater autonomy for women is underway.

At the same time, the struggle to realise gender equality has become an important dimension of a broader struggle to ensure that the ideals of democracy are extended to rural South Africa.

In this respect the principle of gender equality has emerged as a vital line of defence not only against decentralised despotism, but against what could be characterised as creeping centralised despotism in post-apartheid South Africa as well.

Cherryl Walker is professor of sociology at Stellenbosch University. Between 1995 and 2000 she served on the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights.

The New South Africa at Twenty: Critical Perspectives (UKZN Press) is edited by Peter Vale and Estelle H Prinsloo. It is available in most bookshops, online (Loot and Amazon), and directly from the publisher.